[gentoo-dev] Re: s/disk space/drive space

[Chris Brannon]

Jeroen Roovers  writes:

> Also, "drive space" would be dead wrong. A drive[1] is a device which
> holds a storage medium (often a disk, as in, you know, a "disk drive").
> "Solid-state drive" is even more confusing than "solid-state disk" (and
> both are common parlance).

In the interest of linguistic accuracy, maybe solid state drives should
be referred to as "solid state data depositories".  That would overload
one of my favorite acronyms.

-- Chris

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: s/disk space/drive space

[Tobias Klausmann]

Hi! 

On Tue, 30 Jul 2013, Duncan wrote:
> OTOH, the "free space" or "space available" suggestions I saw elsewhere 
> do make a lot of sense and avoid both the "disc" and "mechanical drive" 
> implications.

It's also closer to the common LANG=C expando of ENOSPC. Whatever
the underlying physical thing is, it will usually be a device,
from the OS' point of view.

Regards,
Tobias

-- 
Life is like a burrito:
If it's really good, You won't need a knife.

[gentoo-dev] Re: s/disk space/drive space

[Duncan]

Ulrich Mueller posted on Tue, 30 Jul 2013 14:57:52 +0200 as excerpted:

>> On Tue, 30 Jul 2013, Alexander Berntsen wrote:
> 
>> On 30/07/13 14:12, Alex Legler wrote:
>>> 'disk space' is a perfectly valid term even if you have fancy solid
>>> state drives these days. It is an established term in technical
>>> documentation that everyone understands even if you don't physically
>>> use a 'disk'.
> 
> +1
> 
>> It's *wrong*. In school we were even taught to avoid it. :-)
> 
> It can hardly be more wrong than "drive". A solid state device doesn't
> contain any mechanical components like motors that would drive it.

Additionally, "Drivespace" aka "DRVSPACE.EXE" was an MS whole-partition 
data-compression product at one point (tho I believe they purchased it 
rather than developing it "in-house"), superseding "Doublespace".  For 
people familiar with that, "drive space" has unwanted and possibly 
trademarked associations.

OTOH, the "free space" or "space available" suggestions I saw elsewhere 
do make a lot of sense and avoid both the "disc" and "mechanical drive" 
implications.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman