I heard some people say theyre the same thing, but others are adamant that they have different meanings. Which is it?
Disck
Disk but with a soft k, like in kif
Disque
Diskette
Petit Disk
Disq
Disque*
Disque?
Way too cumbersome
Disqueue, then.
Dischqueue
It’s all disk? 🌎👨🚀
Always has been 🌎👨🚀🔫👨🚀I’ve always viewed it as the Disk contains the Disc. IOW, the floppy has the magnetic disc in it. The optical disc is the disc without the Disk.
Probably completely wrong etymologically, but semantically it’s fun.
Where does that leave my solid state disk?
This is from Hard Disk Drive (HDD), which is a Hard Drive with a Disk. Some people think the HD stands for Hard Disk, and use it incorrectly in SSD, which has no disks.
Oh you’re right is solid state drive not disk
A carryover of terminology?
We still say “film” even though most everything is recorded and played back via digital video.
Disc is short for discus.
Disk is short for diskette, the square things some discs are kept in.
Thats how I interpret it as well.
Isn’t a diskette just a small version of a disk? Much like kitchenette to kitchen
I don’t think so https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk
To quote from your source:
8-inch floppy disk, inserted in drive, (3½-inch floppy diskette, in front, shown for scale)
Get outta here with your actual helpful answer
A disk is something that contains information. It stands for Dense Inside Stored Knowledge
Dense Information Storage Circle
Disc = round
Disk = rectangular
So… what are mini discs?
Discks
Well…That almost makes it too simple.
This is correct in most cases but I don’t think it’s the underlying principle.
This wiki talks about the etymology, with a lot of examples. Most conform to this rule, but there are exceptions in astrophysics like an accretion disk.
Even in info tech, “hard disk” doesn’t really conform to this rule. Like is a hard disk a square hard drive or is it the round thing inside? If it’s the square hard drive, that’s not thin enough to be a “disk”. I’d it’s the round thing inside that would be hard disc, but also creates problems for floppy disk because why refer to the housing in one instance but not another.
Sadly, I think the correct answer is that either refers to a thin flat thing, some spellings are preferred for some uses.
til disk is actually preferred in American English. from your link:
Usage notes
In most varieties of English, disk is the preferred spelling for magnetic media (hence floppy disk, hard disk, disk drive), whereas disc is preferred for optical media (hence compact disc, digital versatile disc, optical disc). For all other uses, disk is preferred in American English and acceptable in Canadian English, and disc otherwise.
Find me an American who says his car is equipped with “disk brakes.” “Disk” is peculiar to computer magnetic storage media, and “disc” for a round object that probably spins.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_(mathematics) preferred spelling here
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disk main entry lists disc as a variant spelling while the entry for disc: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disc notes it as a variant spelling of disk
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/disc links to disk
Cambridge online dictionary seems to agree with you more but it’s always been the shittiest of them
Wikipedia tells me that they were initially developed in England and finally patented in Germany, so I’m guessing that’s why the British spelling is used in that case.
sir, this is lemmy shitpost. Here’s a citation for thinkin too hard, don’t let it happen again.
I can clarify some of the tech stuff.
A “disk” is a concept. It’s an object which contains data.
“Hard” disks and “floppy” disks are always referring to the rigidity of the internal storage media. 7", 5.25", and 3.5" floppy disks have the same round magnetic storage material. The only difference with a 3.5" floppy disk is that they put a hard case over the floppy disk.
CD, DVD, Blu-ray, etc are both disks and discs, as their typically handled without a caddy/case. So technically both apply.
SSDs are still disks, just solid state, rather than floppy/hard spinning magnetic media.
Technically flash drives are also solid state disks, but we don’t generally conflate the two terms for clarity.
You’re conflating “disk” with “drive”.
An SSD is not a disk.
What about MiniDisc, the storage medium of the future?
What about hard disk drives. The “disks” inside them are round
The hard disk is made with discs.
A disk drive reading disc’s would be a disc disk drive
And if it reads 70s music records, it could be a disc disk disco drive!
disc disk
Got ‘em!
There’s been some movement over time but in general disk was used for pc because you had Hard Disk Drives. Then their counterpart the floppy diskette (disks).
Disc as a term was used for media like compact discs and subsequently digital video discs, etc. and then pc components allowing them to be read and then written to did exist for PC’s and, as such, had the disc moniker. But that’s because they were already “discs” branding wise.
USB thumb drives, being created as portable removable media for pc’s were a kind of solid state disk and so they use the k. Even NVME, being primarily storage for computing devices, can also colloquially be called “disks” but more and more people just refer to them as drives and I suspect those who refer to them as disks may do so out of older computer hardware habits and that utilities (fdisk, df, etc)call any such media a “disk”.
I always thought discs were optical and disks were magnetic
Disc seems to be anything with a round and flat outer appearance, where disk seems to refer to any other storage media
I think they’re the same word, though.
It’s the same thing. The difference is origin. Disk is American. Disc is British. Usually the only time “disc” is used in the US, is to refer to something round. A CD could go either way, depending on the writer.
My system’s locale is set to Esperanto so when I insert a CD, it says Sona KD (Kompakta disko).
