RAID error

Hi

I have a RAID 5 array set up on my computer with 3 Maxtor 250GB hard drives. However was playing Empire: Total War last night and the computer crashed with the BSOD. I rebooted like it said but now upon boot up the the Nvidia RAID management is displaying error messages 1 saying that a 250GB drive has a error and another saying that the 500GB (250GB x 2) drive has degraded.
The hard drives I have only had for a few months and I suspect the motherboard SATA ports may be a bit dodgey as I have had problems with hard drives failing before, so I was wondering if there is any way of testing the SATA ports on the motherboard before I try sending it back. Also I want to make sure that the RAID array isn't lost completely if I unplug any of the drive as long as I plug it back in in exactly the same way again.

The system I am using is:
AMD 6000+ Athlon 64 x2 3.0Ghz
ASUS crosshair Formula II
XFX 9800GTX+ 512MB DDR3
2GB(1GBx2) DDR2 RAM
Maxtor 250GB x3 (RAID 5)
DVD-ROM drive
DVD-RW Drive
600W power supply

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks Jamie