hot swap (or hot-swap)


A hot swap is the replacement of a hard drive, CD-ROM drive, power supply, or other device with a similar device while the computer system using it remains in operation. The replacement can be because of a device failure or, for storage devices, to substitute other data.

Hot swapping works by providing a rack or enclosure for the device that provides an appearance to the computer's bus or I/O controller that the device is still there while it's being removed and replaced with another device. A hot swap arrangement is sometimes provided where multiple devices are shared on a local area network. Hot swap arrangements are sold for both SCSI and IDE hard drives. Hot swap versions of a redundant array of independent devices (RAID) are also available.

(http://www.whatis.com/hotswap.htm)

HOT SWAP : il offre la possibilité de débrancher un périphérique externe à chaud sans rien éteindre.
(http://www.conector.fr/html/glossaire_technique.html)