I don't know much about RAID, but I've meesed around with it in the past here and there, everytime I did something wrong or a cable was unplugged, it warned me... also, you must be using the wrong type of RAID there is one (mentioned before) 0+1 I think it was, that with multiple drive one can go down (unplugged) and you can rebuild it with a brand new drive(plug it in). Again I'm not knowledgable enough to tell you specifics but the guys around here should be able to point you to some pages...

The SATA connectors, yeah I've found some of them to be REALLY flimsy and for once I do agree with you. I don't like using glue on drives but it certainly can help the situation. But I found seperately obtained cables are usually much higher quality and often fit much better, espeically the power cables. I've had some power supplies with really cheap connectors on the, I just plug in one of these and it usually clicks in just fine.