When is a disk not a disc ?

Should it be "disk" or "disc" ?

Well, it depends . . . . . . .

As I have been creating these web pages, I have found myself sometimes using the word "disk" and sometimes "disc" and started thinking, "what is the correct spelling?" Maybe you already know ? But from my perspective, there seems to be a lack of consistency in many of the documents that I have seen using the words. For example, the Memotech Price List, uses the words "Silicon Disc" and "Silicon Disk" in different paragraphs!

A Knowledge Base article from Apple has one pair of definitions which seem reasonable to use:

"A disc refers to optical media, such as an audio CD, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM, or DVD-Video disc."

"A disk refers to magnetic media, such as a floppy disk, the disk in your computer's hard drive, an external hard drive."

It still get a bit blurred, they say of "discs" : All discs are removable, meaning when you unmount or eject the disc from your desktop or Finder, it physically comes out of your computer. Of "disks" they say "Disks are usually sealed inside a metal or plastic casing (often, a disk and its enclosing mechanism are collectively known as a "hard drive"). "

So where does that leave the floppy? It is magnetic, but also removable! Well, since the floppy used to be called a "diskette", then disk is the obvious spelling. It was not that obvious to Memotech though, they called their removable media system, the "FDX Disc System".

For these pages, I will use the word disk for everything except Optical media and Memotech product names - except where I forget of course :-)