What is a Hard Copy or a Physical Copy?
A hard copy or a physical copy is printed paper or any other materials from a digital document file. Sometimes the output copy of the printed format is referred to as a permanent copy. Hard copies are still essential for various reasons in our advanced digital world. Hard copies can back up whenever someone loses or accidentally loss from the server any digital documents. A hard copy is a printed form of a digital document file from a computer on paper or any other material that may be transparent,
What is a soft copy or digital document?
A soft copy or digital document file is an electronic version of the document, not printed on paper or other materials. It can be kept saved on a computer or any other device.
You can open and edit a soft copy document using software programs like database programs, processing programs, presentation software, and many more- depending on the document type. The output of a soft copy resides in computers, USB drives, etc. – thus referred to as a temporary copy. A user cannot touch the soft copy because it is virtual. Therefore, it is also a virtual copy of a file/document.
Soft copies can store more safely in a proper hardware structure, like multiple backups, in a good way in the long run than hard copies. Moreover, anyone can easily share soft copies through e-mail, social media, etc. it’s a more convenient and cost-efficient mode of communication than hard copies. See the below comaparison table between Soft copy and Hard copy.