Difference Between Disc and Disk

These terms sound the same when pronounced but technically speaking they are two distinct terms. The two terms can be classified under the secondary storage technologies. We are going to look at the difference between a disc and a disk.

Discs

A disc refers to an optical media which uses direct or random access to store and retrieve data using an optical drive. Examples are the varieties of CD-ROM and DVD-ROM. It has addressable storage locations and uses laser technology to store or write or burn data and read stored data as well. Discs are used for storing extremely large amount of direct access files. It can store moving pictures, as well as text and audio.

Optical media is cheaper than a magnetic tape or magnetic disk. It is also more reliable and has a longer life span than the magnetic media if taken care well. Discs are removable that is, when you eject from the optical disc drive such as CD/DVD-ROM drive, it physically comes out.

Until recently, discs were “Write Once Read Many” (WORM), but now erasable discs are available. Discs can be put into 3 main categories namely discs that are read only (ROM), discs that allow you to burn or write data onto it once (such as CD-R or DVD-R) and discs that are re-writable i.e. data can be erased and rewritten on them again and again (such as CD-RW, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM discs). Another variety of disc is Blu Ray disc which can store large amounts of data. This is good for backing up large amounts of data as some can have capacity of about 200 GB.

Disks

A disk on the other hand is a magnetic storage media which also uses direct or random access to store and retrieve data. It has addressable locations just like the optical media but much more expensive. Magnetic disk devices can also be referred as Direct Access Storage Devices (DASDs). Disks can be grouped as removable or non-removable magnetic storage devices. Examples of removable disks are Floppy disks, Zip disks, SuperDisks, HiFD disks and external hard disk and examples of non-removable disk is the internal hard disk of a computer.

Magnetic disks are re-writable unless the user places a lock on it or set it as write-protected. The user can also partition a single disk into several smaller units to suit his preference.

Disks unlike discs are most often secured in a metal or plastic case known as the magnetic storage devices or drives. For instance, the computer hard disk is housed by the hard drive (the physical unit we always see.)

Before a new disk or blank disk can be used, it must first be formatted into either Fat32, exFAT or NTFS format to be able store data on it. Read more about the file systems.

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Similarities

• Discs and Disks are permanent data storage media.
• Data can be written to and read from them sequentially or randomly using an optical drive or magnetic disk drive.
• They are all secondary storage technologies.

You can read more about this topic here.

I hope this tutorial helpful. Let’s know your concerns by commenting with your questions and suggestions in any of the comment boxes below. Enjoy!!!