I heard some people say theyre the same thing, but others are adamant that they have different meanings. Which is it?
I’ve been known to use them interchangeably.
It’s British English (disc) vs American English (disk).
Edit: I present the Sony Portable Hard Disc Drive
Prepare to have your mind blown.
Portable Hard Disc Drive https://pro.sony/en_GB/products/portable-storage/psz-hb-b-series
I don’t doubt the diskette comment since it’s an American invention. But sometimes this nuance shows up.
Has nothing to do with country. Discs are round objects. In the computing sense that’s cds, dvds, etc.
Disks are floppy disks(diskette, “discette” never existed as a word) , hard drive disks… etc. There is a difference and it has nothing to do with what land you’re in. Disk in usa never meant a circular object like a Frisbee (discus for example)
But the floppy diskette and the “hard disks” did in fact have circular discs inside that spin around.
I suspect that the word diskette was created as an analog to tape “cassette”. With both diskette and cassette, the media is stored inside an enclosure, and you don’t have to take it out manually.
“-Ette” is a common diminutive used to imply that something is a smaller version of something else. Like many things, we nicked it from the French.
Cigarette, a little cigar. Featurette, a short feature. Novelette, a miniature novel. Etc.
So, diskette, a little disk. Quite separate from the ones spinning in your company’s mainframe at the time. Those ones were two feet in diameter locked in a steel cabinet that weighs two tons. This one can fit in your shirt pocket. You get the idea.
Considering “cassette” is the diminutive form of “casse” which meant “case,” this seems right. This meant that the magnetic tape was held in a “diminutive case” which was arguably true when compared to records and 8-tracks.
So, diskettes also being magnetic, also being encased in something, and also being the diminutive form of a larger thing tracks.
By george, I think they’ve got it.
I think they got that from Wikipedia
Jerboa won’t let me post a screenshot right now but here’s a link
The fact that there’s even a document on Apple.com is mind blowing
