Final answer:
Soft mounts allow a client to disconnect and report an error when a server is unreachable, while hard mounts make the client keep trying to connect, maintaining data integrity but potentially hanging applications until the server is reachable again.
Step-by-step explanation:
The terms soft mounting points and hard mounting points are commonly used in the context of file systems, particularly with network file systems such as NFS (Network File System). Soft mounts allow a client to continue working even if the server goes down or becomes unreachable. T
his means that if the network connection fails, or the server crashes, the client will receive an error, and applications accessing the mounted filesystem may fail as well. In contrast, hard mounts maintain a persistent connection, wherein if the server goes down, the client will keep trying to connect until the server is back online, causing applications to hang rather than fail. Hard mounts are generally considered more reliable because they ensure that data integrity is maintained even in the event of network issues, at the potential cost of system usability while the server is unreachable.