When using any RAID1 system, you should NOT plan to disconnect any RAID member during operations. Doing so just MIGHT cause some data corruption that could be difficult to recover from. RAID1 is very good at recovering from faults, but why tempt fate?
Even if you remove a HDD from a RAID system while the unit is shut down, then re-start, the system will understand that to mean that the RAID array is broken because one member is not operating properly. The RAID management system then will handle this by reverting to using the remaining HDD as a stand-alone unit, just as if you had not removed a drive, but it had failed for some other reason. It will then expect you to replace the faulty HDD and will assist you in restoring the RAID1 array when this has been done. "Restoring" means duplicating the still-good HDD back to the new replacement HDD.
So, if you remove one HDD from the RAID1 array while it is shut down, and then copy to the removed unit some files from another machine, and then re-install it before starting up, what will happen? The system will detect that the two units in the RAID array are no longer identical, and will try to resolve that by making the "faulty" unit exactly match the "good" unit. Likely that would mean the stuff you copied to the removed-and-replaced drive would be wiped out or corrupted as its contents were adjusted. Do no do this.
Basically, RAID1 and "Hot Swapping" do NOT mix! Do not try this at home.
If you need to copy files from another machine to your RAID1-equipped machine, do it some other way. If necessary, use a third HDD you can move between machines as a stand-alone drive in each case. Or, consider connecting machines on a small network and setting up sharing access to drives so you can copy from one machine's drives to the other's.
Item 2: Generally, RAID1 is the easiest to migrate to another machine and RAID control system. More than that, I'd say it's a VERY good bet that, if you lost the mobo and had to replace it, you should replace with a new mobo that also uses an Intel chipset. Your uses the Z77 chipset. I would expect that, in future, most Intel chipsets deployed on new mobos will use virtually the same RAID management systems, so that they would have no trouble working with HDD's written by your Intel Z77 chipset. The result could well be that you would not even know there was an issue - it would just work. But even if it did not work right away, usually there are some relatively easy tools to use to gain access to ALL of the files on a RAID1 pair. Basically, all that any new RAID1 management system has to do in the worst case is treat ONE of the disks like the surviving good disk after a failure of the other, and act like it is working with a "broken" RAID1 array and continue on that way to use the "good" disk and maybe "restore" the other. So, with RAID1, it is very UNlikely that you would lose your data, especially if you moved to another mobo with an Intel chipset.
Item 3: many people find the RAID systems built into Windows not so good, and probably slower than a system built into your mobo and BIOS. The only advantage it has is what you cite - Windows in future is not likely to forget how to deal with a RAID1 array written by an earlier Windows.
Item 4: tokencode's comments are good. One thing you should understand. In all of the RAID3, RAID4 and RAID5 systems, the RAID system can automatically recover completely from the failure of ONE of the HDD's in the array. BUT after you have replaced the faulty HDD and during the time that array rebuilding is happening, two effects emerge. One is that the system is doing a LOT of work, so its performance is slowed down. And this can take from hours to several days, depending on what else is being done. The other is that EVERY disk is being used heavily for the rebuilding operation, and all of them are just as old and worn as the one that failed. So there is a possibility (small) that the rebuilding operation itself could cause the failure of a second HDD, and that is catastrophic. The system cannot recover itself from the failure of two HDD's. SO: you MUST still have a backup system. I actually saw this happen in a professionally-managed server system. Two drives in a 5-drive RAID5 system failed, and once they were replaced the system had to be rebuilt from backup tapes. They were not today's current huge drives and they were in a busy server in constant use, but it took over 3 days to restore. RAID10, by the way, can recover from a single HDD failure and MAY be able to recover from 2 drive failures - it all depends on which two.
The only RAID system that can recover from simultaneous failure of TWO drives is RAID6, which your machine can't do within its own RAID tools. But VERY few people would use such a system for a home unit - it tends to be used in large enterprise server systems.
As a final note, you may hear the term "hardware RAID". To be correct, such a system means that all of the RAID operations are being carried out by dedicated hardware (a processor, HDD controllers, BIOS and cache RAM) on a separate card usually plugged into a PCIe slot. This moves virtually all of the work off the mobo and its resources, thus speeding up overall operations. But such add-on cards are expensive. (Moreover, some cheap add-on cards actually are not fully hardware RAID systems - they are more like the systems "built into" your mobo (below)). The opposite, "software RAID", comes it two sub-versions. One is what Windows itself makes available - code contained in an app that runs on the mobo and its CPU and resources. The other is what is in your mobo's BIOS (and most others these days). The code is in the BIOS, and many of the operations necessary can be done in the support chipset (not in the CPU), so it is faster than a purely software-only RAID. But it still uses mobo and CPU time and resources, and is not as fast as a full dedicated RAID controller board.
[Rephrased due to PUI (Posting Under the Influence of Alchohol) last night] 
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram