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

  • MewtwoLikesMemes@lemmy.world
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    3 months 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
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          2 months 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
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          2 months 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
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      3 months 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.