What is the difference between soft and hard mounting points?

The NFS mount options basically define how a client should handle or face a server crash or fail. In case of the soft mount, the client can report an error without waiting for a response from the NFS server. But this could also result in data corruption or data loss too. On the other hand, in case of the hard mount, the NFS file system repeatedly contacts the server until it receives a response. Once it reaches the server, the program will continue execution from the same point where it was stuck during the server crash.