24 Jul
2005
24 Jul
'05
8:04 a.m.
Curiousity for the day - is there any difference between the use of disk
and disc when describing floppy drives, hard drives etc.?
The majority of people seem to use disc, but the use of one or the other
doesn't seem to be a regional thing.
I just wondered if one is technically right and the other wrong when it
comes to computing...
cheers
Jules
24 Jul
24 Jul
9:08 a.m.
At 08:04 AM 7/24/2005, you wrote:
Curiosity for the day - is there any difference between
the use of disk
and disc when describing floppy drives, hard drives etc.?
my take
Disk = floppy or hard disk
Disc - some people use it to describe a CD. Imagine it started with a
spelling error
=================================
Gene Ehrich
gehrich at tampabay.rr.com
2:42 p.m.
At 08:04 AM 7/24/2005, you wrote:
Compact Disc players (and old CD-ROM drives) say 'Compact Disc Digital
Audio' on them (it's spelt with a 'c' there).
I was under the impression that 'Disk' was the American spelling, and was
therefore used for floppies, winchesters, etc. Disc is the English
spelling, and is used for CDs (and DVDs?)
-tony
Curiosity for the day - is there any difference
between the use of disk
and disc when describing floppy drives, hard drives etc.?
my take
Disk = floppy or hard disk
Disc - some people use it to describe a CD. Imagine it started with a
spelling error 
7:43 p.m.
At 07:42 PM 7/24/05 +0100, you wrote:
I think you're probably right. I've almost always seen it spelled Disk
in the US. However one notable exception is HP. They spell it Disc.
Joe
At 08:04 AM 7/24/2005, you wrote:
I was under the impression that 'Disk' was the American spelling, and was
therefore used for floppies, winchesters, etc. Disc is the English
spelling, and is used for CDs (and DVDs?) Curiosity for the day - is there any difference
between the use of disk
and disc when describing floppy drives, hard drives etc.?
26 Jul
26 Jul
1:37 p.m.
Re:
>
> At 08:04 AM 7/24/2005, you wrote:
> >Curiosity for the day - is there any difference between the use of disk
> >and disc when describing floppy drives, hard drives etc.?
IIRC, the major IEEE magazines adopted a standard
of "disk" for magnetic media, "disc" for optical media
...IIRC, about 5 years ago I asked one of their senior
editors about magneto-optical :)
He said "disc", because for them the optical overrides
the magnetic part.
--
Stan Sieler
sieler at allegro.com
www.allegro.com/sieler/wanted/index.html
24 Jul
24 Jul
10:31 a.m.
In message <1122206674.10241.42.camel at weka.localdomain>
Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
Curiousity for the day - is there any difference
between the use of disk
and disc when describing floppy drives, hard drives etc.?
Near as I can tell...
Disk = shortened form of "Diskette".
Disc = Little round thing inside a floppy disk, covered in ferromagnetic
"Magic Dust".
Alternate: Round plastic thing used to store data, e.g. CD, DVD.
I spell it "disc" - most of the RISC OS users I know do too (probably down to
Acorn using that spelling in RISC OS and all the OS manuals - right down to
hard drives being initialised as "HardDisc<drivenum>" after formatting).
Start a war over it if you like, but I'll just sit and watch, thanks.
Later.
--
Phil. | Acorn Risc PC600 Mk3, SA202, 64MB, 6GB,
philpem at philpem.me.uk | ViewFinder, 10BaseT Ethernet, 2-slice,
http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | 48xCD, ARCINv6c IDE, SCSI
... New strain of system-trashing virus : WINDOWS
6:14 p.m.
On Sun, 24 Jul 2005, Jules Richardson wrote:
Curiousity for the day - is there any difference
between the use of disk
and disc when describing floppy drives, hard drives etc.?
The majority of people seem to use disc, but the use of one or the other
doesn't seem to be a regional thing.
I just wondered if one is technically right and the other wrong when it
comes to computing...
Isn't there ANYBODY around old enough to remember that this was
THOROUGHLY discussed and settled in the computer press over 25 years ago?
A computer drive uses a "DISK"; sometimes derived from "diskette",
(and sometimes with a Germanic (NOT USA v Brits) influence).
There was a SPECIFIC EXCEPTION made for HP, who derive their "discs"
(and even sometimes "discettes"!) from "discus".
Because HP yousta make good test gear, and yousta have good
engineering, it was generally accepted that nobody objected
to their mispelling.
("I love this VTVM; they can spell things any way they want!")
However AUDIO "disc"s are spelled with a 'C'. When CD-ROMs came about,
they were derived from audio CDs; therefore, CD-ROMs are "DISC"s,
and floppies are "DISK"s.
OB_CCTALK: Do modern (oxymoron?) Japanese, British, and Amurican cars
have "Disc brakes" or "Disk brakes"? (German cars have
"disk")
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
25 Jul
25 Jul
7:57 a.m.
On 25/07/2005, at 8:14 AM, Fred Cisin wrote:
OB_CCTALK: Do modern (oxymoron?) Japanese, British,
and Amurican cars
have "Disc brakes" or "Disk brakes"? (German cars have
"disk")
Interestingly my very recently acquired new German car (major expense
for a major birthday - see previous post regarding using disk well
before floppies were invented) refers to the brakes as disc brakes
and I've never seen such brakes referred to as disk brakes before. Of
course the manual might have been rewritten in Australian English
(more probably British).
I have always referred to disk drives as disk, not disc even though
my Computer Science lecturer (yes, there was exactly one back in the
"Good Old Days") always referred to them as disc drives. I'd just
assumed this was because he'd learnt about computing at Cambridge and
used the English spelling whereas the vast majority of the computers
I've ever used are American. I can only think of two that aren't and
they're both Japanese (Sharp and Epson).
Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies at kerberos.davies.net.au
Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the
Australia | air, the sky would be painted green"
26 Jul
26 Jul
2:04 a.m.
OB_CCTALK: Do modern (oxymoron?) Japanese, British,
and Amurican cars
have "Disc brakes" or "Disk brakes"? (German cars have
"disk")
To me as a native of the North American idiom, "disc" looks more
correct in that use. But I'd also bring up "dis[ck] jockey" for
someone who spins recordings, eg for a radio station, with the implied
meaning of "dis[ck]"; in that case too I've seen both spellings but
"disc" looks more correct to me.
Cf. Terry Pratchett's "discworld" books....
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
25 Jul
25 Jul
8:47 a.m.
Greetings from Manhattan :D
Curiousity for the day - is there any difference between the use of disk
and disc when describing floppy drives, hard drives etc.?
For no other reason than 'I have for years' I use DISK for magnetic media
and DISC for Cds etc, probably because the 'compact disc' and 'laserdisc'
logos used the 'c' instead of the 'k' and the early floppy drive adverts
and manuals I can remember used the 'k'.
--
adrian/witchy
Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator
www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UKs biggest home computer collection?
6932
days inactive
6934
days old
11 comments
10 participants
participants (10)
-
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
gehrich＠tampabay.rr.com -
huw.davies＠kerberos.davies.net.au -
julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk -
mouse＠Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA -
philpem＠dsl.pipex.com -
rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com -
sieler＠allegro.com -
witchy＠binarydinosaurs.co.uk