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RBWells ,

I am not sure, but my oldest child was looking at an English brochure for a trip to France and a asked me "what the heck is a dis-coth-a-cue? Discotheque. A Disco, a dance club. And yes disco-tek is spelled Discotheque in English.

Etterra ,

Not in America it ain’t. Here it’s spelled “Disco is dead.”

Fedizen ,

Disc = round

Disk = rectangular

BlackPenguins ,

Well…That almost makes it too simple.

MrScottyTay ,

What about hard disk drives. The “disks” inside them are round

Mercuri ,

The hard disk is made with discs.

fine_sandy_bottom ,

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.

Ioughttamow ,

Disq

Jerkface ,

Disque?

Ioughttamow ,

Way too cumbersome

Jerkface ,

Disqueue, then.

MintyFresh ,

Disque*

simplejack ,
@simplejack@lemmy.world avatar

Disck

Aggravationstation ,

Disc is short for discus.

Disk is short for diskette, the square things some discs are kept in.

BananaTrifleViolin ,

Disc and disk are varient spellings of the same word that pre-exist computing. Disc is more common in British English, Disk more common in American English. But yeah since computing came along disk has also been used more for magnetic media (hard disk) while disc has been used more for optical media (compact disc). I wouldn’t be surprised if this only happened because of how the CD was marketed and branded as a “compact disc” as a trademark while hard disks and floppy disks etc were more generic terms.

partial_accumen , (edited )

In modern parlance, this has been my working understanding too:

But yeah since computing came along disk has also been used more for magnetic media (hard disk) while disc has been used more for optical media (compact disc).

Optical:

  • compact disc
  • laser disc

Magnetic:

  • 3.5" diskette
  • 800GB hard disk drive

…and just to point out there is some disagreement

Magneto-Optical , such as Sony MiniDisc, is sometimes referred to Disc for its optical properties and sometimes as a MO Disk for its magnetic properties.

intensely_human ,

A disk is something that contains information. It stands for Dense Inside Stored Knowledge

feedum_sneedson ,

Dense Information Storage Circle

Red_October ,

Disk is for things that are more kiki, but disc, with that rounded off c, is for things that are more bouba.

don ,

IYKYK.

IntergalacticTurtleFucker ,

What about disq?

Phen ,

Round things with antennas

IntergalacticTurtleFucker ,

What about disckque

I_Miss_Daniel ,

And what is Lemmy?

SzethFriendOfNimi , (edited )
@SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world avatar

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”.

MewtwoLikesMemes ,
@MewtwoLikesMemes@lemmy.world avatar

As others have said and how I always see it:

  • Discs are small, circular, flat objects, e.g. the discus;
  • Disks are discs used for computer stuff, e.g. floppy disk(ettes), CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs, hard disks, and so forth…

In other words, all disks are discs, but not all discs are disks.

Here’s a shitty drawing I made to illustrate:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/69ec8c00-c846-43c2-b0ce-41f866a673b6.jpeg

EleventhHour ,
@EleventhHour@lemmy.world avatar

upvoted for your spiffy drawing, although i don’t agree with it

MewtwoLikesMemes ,
@MewtwoLikesMemes@lemmy.world avatar

Lol, thanks.

What about my distinction do you disagree with, though?

EleventhHour , (edited )
@EleventhHour@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t think the differentiation makes any sense at all.

edit: to clarify-- this isn’t a criticism of the op’s sketch; i just don’t think any attempt makes sense

dragnucs ,

Does not make send but it is true though.

proper ,
@proper@lemmy.world avatar

my attempt to simplify the above explanation; -disc =round -disk =storage

Storage can be round but not all round things are storage

flambonkscious ,

But that doesn’t cover the round storage we call compact discs. It’s just nonsensical

proper ,
@proper@lemmy.world avatar

I mean to me compact disc sounds like small and round. Just happens to also be storage media 🤷‍♂️

ArgentRaven ,

Computer usage doesn’t determine that you spell it with a k.

A disk is indeed short for diskette, and disc is short for discus.

However, you can absolutely use a compact disc on a computer.

And while there are typically spinning platters or spinning magnetic strips inside hard drive disks or floppy disks, they are referred to by the whole unit as a logical disk drive that you’d see in computer.

If it’s possible to find them all now, you’d see that DVDs, CDs, Blu-ray, laserdisc, are all spelled like discus. 3.5, 4.5 floppy disks, hard drives, solid state drives, tape drives, etc all spell it disk.

So for the most part, being purely observational, you can see that anything shaped like a frisbee with a hole in it will be a disc, and everything else is a disk.

I think that’s slightly different than your explanation, as the terms are mutually exclusive.

blackjam_alex ,

But…

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/890be109-fa20-41dc-be8b-c4eaa72eec5f.jpeg

marcos ,

You have to put a segment of “disk” outside of the “disc” set on that Venn diagram. You are forgetting about solid state disks.

Johandea ,

But SSD is solid state drive, not solid state disc/disk

GardenVarietyAnxiety ,

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.

superkret ,

All I know is there’s no such thing as a discette.

OfCourseNot ,
@OfCourseNot@fedia.io avatar

There is, or was, tho.

sentient_loom ,
@sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works avatar

umm, are you suggesting that all discs are male???

Glifted ,

Discs are asexual. It’s why they can make offspring without a partner.

FelixCress ,

There is a dicklette or so your wife claims.

Mouselemming ,

Could be because c followed by e is usually pronounced “s” rather than “k”

Blackout ,
@Blackout@fedia.io avatar

Where I'm from we spell it disj but that's because the c and k keys were broken 😞

dual_sport_dork , (edited )
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

At its root this was originally a British vs. American English thing. However, the spelling of “disc” with a C has been used specifically as the trade name of various brands including both the throwable and optical media varieties, which have since become genericized trademarks.

For the optical media side of things, the name was coined by Phillips while they were consorting with Sony to develop the standard and named it the “Compact Disc” to compliment their already existing “Compact Cassette” product. They developed an official logo for the format which spelled it “disc.” That’s been with us ever since.

Volumes of computer storage are now colloquially referred to as “disks” because A) a significant majority of the early computer development milieu in general happened in America where we, or at least IBM, spell it with a K, and B) for a very long time, that’s exactly what they were. Tape and magnetic core memory and wire loop memory were all early developments that ultimately gave way to the longstanding popularity of magnetic platter/disk fixed storage… With some exception granted to tape, which hung around for a very long time but definitely was not a random access storage medium suitable for general purpose applications whereas disks were. It’s probably pure happenstance that the dominant non-fixed computer storage media also wound up being disk shaped, namely the various sizes and types of floppy disks. Computers handle linear tape based storage and random access disk based storage very differently, and nowadays random access permanent storage still has the “disk” moniker stuck to it even though it’s now likely to be solid state.

As a generalized descriptor of a flat circular object, either “disk” or “disc” is appropriate but which is preferred seems to be largely depending on which continent you’re from. The root of the word is indeed the Greek “discus,” as in the object yeeted across the playing field by Olympic contestants.

tea ,

For the optical media side of things, the name was coined by Phillips while they were consorting with Sony to develop the standard and named it the “Compact Disc” to compliment their already existing “Compact Cassette” product. They developed an official logo for the format which spelled it “disc.” That’s been with us ever since.

Didn’t LaserDisc predate Compact Discs?

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

It did. That may have influenced the naming convention. The LaserDisc was actually originally conceived as the “DiscoVision.” And if that name isn’t a veritable time capsule of its era, I don’t know what is.

tea ,

Oh interesting…the plot thickens!

HikingVet ,

I haven’t heard USB drives or SSD’s be referred to as disks.

ArbiterXero ,

You need to spend more time with hardcore tech nerds 😝

You’re right, mostly people don’t call them that, but they do qualify and all the low level systems call them disks

SnotFlickerman ,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I remember when SSDs were still new, trying to install one on an older system and in the process the system needing to know the “number of sectors on the disk” which… SSDs don’t have sectors. It was a confusing thing to get through at the time, but I recall figuring it out.

deranger , (edited )

And you had to get the partition aligned (?) when you formatted it. I had a 120GB OCZ Agility I paid like $380 for. It was amazing loading in way before everyone in games, I remember always being first in my WoW clan raids. Left 4 Dead 2 also ripped on that SSD. It died within a year and the RMA replacement died within year as well. RIP

ArbiterXero ,

Ocz plus? lol

deranger ,

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/384cdcfb-2af2-44cc-badf-9531bcdd1d8b.jpeg

One of those.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

But they’re still referred to as “drives” when arguably they aren’t that anymore, either. It’s really tough to ditch a moniker sometimes.

Denjin ,

It’s from diskette which is a portmanteau of disk and cassette which is from the early days or portable storage where cassettes were used to house disks to keep them safe from damage. For example floppy disk.

Because they form a similar job, portable storage, modern day usb pen drives and ssds are often referred to as disks.

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