Says on the website it has "hot plug" functions, and I'm thinking thats the same thing as hot swap.. I was going to add a hot swap bay to my computer for practical uses..
http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/970%20Extreme4/?cat=Specifications
I don't know what hot plug is, but hot swap bays have to do with the case. It has nothing to do with the motherboard.
Hot swap does have to do with the motherboard. You shouldn't just go ripping drives out a motherboard while the computer is running if the motherboard doesn't support hot swapping.
http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3908#sp I may go with this motherboard instead. Newegg has it on sale today only. For a total of 30 dollars less, do you think it's a better choice?
Unless you're going to be ripping your boot drive out of your computer, it's not really going to matter. The hard drive isn't going to be spinning unless you're opening a file or program that's saved to it. If there was some kind of technology built into motherboards that had to do with hot swapping, it would have to somehow predict when you're going to take the drive out of your computer which is impossible. Hot swap has nothing to do with the motherboard. Just don't be a moron and remove the drive when it's in use.
The ASRock board is better.
I can confirm ASUS UEFI supports hot swap in the UEFI it must be enabled and with a supported drive ( generally all drives supporting AHCI command set ) will correctly support hotswap. Keep in mind that you must also install AMD's SB storage / sata driver to ensure this functionality works correctly.
you can check out a board like the M5A99FX PRO R2.0
Hope this helps. Please enjoy the rest of your day.
Best Regards,
JJ