Which of the following can provide direct connections for hot-swappable drives?

An expansion card adds functionality to a computer via an expansion slot but does not typically provide direct, consolidated hot-swappable connections for multiple drives in the way a backplane does.

A daughter card is a smaller circuit board that plugs into a larger main board to add functionality, but it is not specifically designed to provide direct hot-swappable drive connections.

A riser card is used to re-orient expansion slots, allowing cards to be mounted parallel to the motherboard in compact cases, but it does not directly provide hot-swappable drive connections.

A backplane is a circuit board that acts as an intermediary, providing connectors and electrical pathways for multiple hot-swappable drives to connect to a controller or the motherboard. This design allows drives to be inserted or removed without powering down the system, which is crucial for server uptime.