Data recovery software: what’s the process?

So, if I had, lets say, 7 hard drives that were part of an array (raid-5) and the controller card went out. Would I have to take turns hooking each of the 7 HDDs to an external hard drive and download the content onto thet computer that has the data recovery software for it to do its magic? how does this work?
Eyaaaaaah, I didn’t see anything about software useage as an option there…..thanks!

Here’s some information that should help you

http://ask.metafilter.com/37124/Lost-RAID-controller-EOTW
http://www.velocityreviews.com/forums/t231455-raid-array-controller-failure.html