I heard some people say theyre the same thing, but others are adamant that they have different meanings. Which is it?

  • Red_October@lemmy.world
    1905·
    9 days ago

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

  • BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    361·
    9 days ago

    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.

    • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
      1·
      3 days ago

      Bloody English spelling… There’s a reason spelling bees don’t exist in some other languages.

      We have a competition for spelling because English spelling is so bad at its job.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
      17·
      9 days ago

      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.

    • fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc
      181·
      9 days ago

      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.

      • pyre@lemmy.world
        61·
        9 days ago

        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.

      • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.caEnglish
        31·
        9 days ago

        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.

      • Fedizen@lemmy.world
        22·
        8 days ago

        sir, this is lemmy shitpost. Here’s a citation for thinkin too hard, don’t let it happen again.

  • Hildegarde@lemmy.world
    253·
    8 days ago

    Its a disk when its magnetic, disc when optical.

    The way to remember it is that its disk because its magnetik.

  • RBWells@lemmy.world
    21·
    9 days ago

    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.

  • MewtwoLikesMemes@lemmy.worldEnglish
    256·
    9 days ago

    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:

        • EleventhHour@lemmy.world
          3·
          9 days ago

          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

        • ArgentRaven@lemmy.world
          1·
          9 days ago

          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.

    • marcos@lemmy.world
      62·
      9 days ago

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

  • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
    172·
    9 days ago

    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@lemmy.today
      2·
      9 days ago

      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 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
        3·
        9 days ago

        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.