Either one will suffice. I use floppy disk more often than diskette in everyday usage, but diskette sounds more formal to me. (If you want the document to have more of a formal air to it, you might rather choose diskette.)
Tim is correct, although "diskette" sounds rather dated to me. I haven’t seen the term used for ages. Come to think of it, floppy disks are quickly becoming things of the past in this age of CD-RWs and other more efficient storage media. Many modern laptops only offer a floppy disk drive as an optional accessory.
"Floppy disk" refers to the 3 1/2 inch (8.25 cm) or 5 1/4 inch removable media that typically hold only 1 to 2 megabytes.
"Zip disk" is a proprietary media from iomega that supports up to 200 megabytes (or so).
Both can be refered to as diskettes, although I haven’t actually heard that term recently.
And yes, I do recall the actual "floppy disk" which was the 5 1/4 inch disk and held 160 kilobytes. Although there was an 8 inch version that predated that.
Minor correction: Iomega makes a Zip 750MB USB 2.0 drive now. (You might say it’s the SUV of Zip drives… )
*OT alert*
Which reminds me: I think the initials SUV have been converted from ‘sports utility vehicle’ to ‘sub-urban vehicle’...
And speaking of remember when, my first computer used regular run-of-the-mill audio cassettes to store and retrieve data. You didn’t get stellar performance, but it was still remarkable to this then young teenager. :)
My father had some 8 inch floppies. And I have seen reel to reel computers and punch tape computers (PDP LNK 8). And yes, computers that on cassete tapes and one (the Sorcerer) that used something not unlike an 8 track cartridge. BTW, some backup devices still include cassete tape storage. Especially workstations (Suns for example. Although I haven’t seen a new Sun recently.).
As for SUV, I thought it stood for Suburban Uhssault Vehicle.
Just to keep my reputation for consistently posting off topic intact:
My first PORTABLE computer had a 4" monochrome monitor and TWO 5 1/2" floppy drives (but no hard drive). It was almost a handheld, weighing in at a mere 40 lbs. The monitor was the sole reason I learned to touch-type. I simply couldn’t SEE what I was typing. ;D
I loved it dearly, though. I couldn’t quite believe they’d finally invented a machine that saved me the bother of re-typing everything.
Prior to that, the only computer I had didn’t have any monitor at all. Thermal paper. Oh my gosh.
Just in case you’re seriously asking, I believe the computer PW was referring to was in use way before the Internet was in common usage… and way before ‘chat rooms’ were popular.
Well, actually, text printed out on heat sensitive paper. Each terminal had to have a whole roll of it. It also had a pair of rubber doohickeys into which you jammed a telephone handset. Kind of hokey, but it WAS 35 years ago. Hard to imagine what things were like before THAT. I guess we used to CHAT in the pub. ;D
I guess i was half kidding about the "chat’ comment but I can’t picture a computer without a monitor. The closest thing I had to a computer back in the day was an electonic typewriter that had a little screen so you could edit before putting your words on paper. I thought I was pretty darn cool having one of those do-hickies! 8)
