Which statement describes a hot spare?

Which statement describes a hot spare?

• A. A physical drive installed and kept ready to replace a failed drive
• B. A duplicate of data kept offsite
• C. A volatile cache memory
• D. A secondary pool for archives

Answer: (A)

Hot spare enables automatic failover in storage arrays. In a RAID or storage subsystem, a hot spare is a physical disk that is installed and powered on, kept ready to replace a failed drive. When any drive in the array fails, the hot spare automatically takes over and the array begins rebuilding onto that disk, maintaining redundancy and minimizing downtime. This is different from backups kept offsite, which are for recovery after data loss but don’t participate in real-time fault tolerance. It’s also not related to cache memory, which speeds data access, or to a separate pool for archives, which is about data organization rather than fault tolerance.

Hot spare enables automatic failover in storage arrays. In a RAID or storage subsystem, a hot spare is a physical disk that is installed and powered on, kept ready to replace a failed drive. When any drive in the array fails, the hot spare automatically takes over and the array begins rebuilding onto that disk, maintaining redundancy and minimizing downtime. This is different from backups kept offsite, which are for recovery after data loss but don’t participate in real-time fault tolerance. It’s also not related to cache memory, which speeds data access, or to a separate pool for archives, which is about data organization rather than fault tolerance.