"Lost" Raid Array 5

We've had problems with our raid array, having to go into the configuration utility to import foreign views. To make a long story short, someone (not me), instead of doing an import, selected clear so now I no longer have a raid array nor can I boot the server. My questions are: 1) Without losing the data, is there a software product that will allow me to access the hard drives to retrieve the data? If so, what would you recommend? 2) Since the server is basically used as a file server, along with a SQL database, is it worth it to re-build the raid? 3) Would it be worth the extra cost to put the SQL database on a separate server? Although the data is no longer needed on a daily basis, we are legally required to keep the data for 7 years, which would take us to 2015. As an added note, whoever set up the system before I was hired, was only using MS-Backup to backup the system, and I don't know how good the backup tapes are.