What's the difference between a soft reload and a hard reload in first person shooters?

If my memory is right, the hard reload was one done automatically when you kept pressing fire and eventually ran out of ammo, in contrast the soft reload was done when you manually selected reload without trying to shoot first (so, in the example, you were reloading while still having few bullets left)

The difference is hard to notice, but because in first case the script then would try shooting, noticed lack of ammo, done the reloading and continue the shooting, which would lead to longer downtime when you are defenseless, thanks to that attempted failed shot.

It's not necessary visible in every game, but in some it might take a noticeable fraction of a second longer.