While cold storage is a more inaccessible method to store archived data, hot storage is known for being easy to access and is commonly used as a data recovery mechanism for backup data. There is no delay in how quickly you can access it and therefore has different storage costs associated with it.
Cold storage is for the dormant or older data stored on media files or in the cloud. Hot storage is more like a constant data stream for files that are still being used daily in the running of a business.