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It seems to me like "floppy disk" and "diskette" refer to the same thing, a device with a flat magnetic disk inside a square container, that is really floppy (less on 3"1/2). The most common name seems to be "floppy disk", at least in America.

Is there really no difference between the terms "floppy disk" and "diskette"?

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    Note that ‘floppy’ refers to the magnetic disk itself, not to its jacket/sleeve/enclosure — and as such, it applies equally well to the 3½", which is just as floppy if you extract it.
    – gidds
    Commented Nov 11 at 0:02
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    Also note that for magnetic media, the spelling is ‘disk’ even in UK English (which uses ‘disc’ for other meanings, including optical media).
    – gidds
    Commented Nov 11 at 0:05
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    The English spelling is 'disk' now, US terms regrettably having taken over. But this is Retrocomputing, and there are plenty of fine old British computers that had magnetic discs. But no 'discettes' :-)
    – dave
    Commented Nov 11 at 0:25
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    @dave As a Canadian and, thus, used to a mish-mash of American and British English, I'll say that my perception has been that disc is only not used for magnetic media because the protective outer shell is non-removable. Intuitively, optical media is a disc because it's visibly like a discus, while other kinds of media are a disk because the most you can strip it down to without voiding the warranty isn't round. (i.e. It's a "disk" because you can't see the "disc(s)". A CD in a caddy is a disc because the caddy is conceptually a separate item. etc.)
    – ssokolow
    Commented Nov 11 at 6:23
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    @rexkogitans I agree with this idea generally, but English is infamous for its inconsistency between pronunciation of similarly-written words. E.g. "sceptic" isn't pronounced as "septic", even though its spelling looks the same as in "science".
    – Ruslan
    Commented Nov 11 at 10:02

2 Answers 2

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No difference.

"Diskette" is what IBM called it when they introduced it.
"Floppy" is the vernacular.

The IBM Diskette and its implications for minicomputer systems.

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    Both Wiktionary and Wikipedia agree: ‘diskette’, ‘floppy disk’, ‘floppy diskette’, and ‘floppy’ are all pretty much synonymous.  (I'd assumed that ‘diskette’ was only for the smaller formats: 5¼", 3½", 3" — but no, it was coined for the original 8".)
    – gidds
    Commented Nov 10 at 23:58
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    The original 8” floppy was smaller than the removable hard disk packs, so, yes, the diminutive -ette was added
    – Jon Custer
    Commented Nov 11 at 0:18
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    yes, they were cute little buggers, these 8" diskettes :-D
    – Tommylee2k
    Commented Nov 11 at 8:10
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    One could add that 'Diskette' is the German word for floppy disk. Maybe this is based on IBM being more successful in pushing their terminology but I don't know.
    – quarague
    Commented Nov 11 at 10:23
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    @quarague I believe variants of diskette are predominately used in most European languages.
    – jkej
    Commented Nov 11 at 12:39
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For common speech, I agree with the accepted answer. However, I haven't seen anyone disambiguate the terms, and there is a difference.

"Floppy disk" covers all of the size and housing variants (8-inch, 5.25-inch, 3.5 inch). The disk is the round piece of thin flexible plastic inside the housing. It's "floppy" (i.e. flexible) as opposed to "hard" (as in "hard drive" or "hard disk drive").

"Diskette" is a portmanteu, combining "disk" and "cassette". The cassette is the hard plastic housing and its spring-loaded shutter.

Alternate technologies used hard disks inside cassettes too. Jaz disks are "hard diskettes" (a hard disk inside a cassette) but they're just referred to using the brand name.

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    Do you have any evidence that diskette is a portmanteau of disk and cassette? All the etymological resources I can think of disagree and give the more obvious and straightforward etymology that it’s simply disk with the diminutive suffix -ette. The term diskette was likely influenced by the similarly formed cassette (from casse ‘case’ + -ette, formed in French), but that doesn’t make it a portmanteau.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Nov 13 at 18:38
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    Agreed. ette is a common suffix, often diminutive.
    – dave
    Commented Nov 13 at 20:13
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    But the whole answer is I think wrong. Claiming that "diskette" is a combination of the recording medium and the (hard plastic) housing is just wrong -- there were 8" diskettes which possessed neither a hard plastic housing nor a spring-loaded shutter.
    – dave
    Commented Nov 13 at 20:17
  • I'm 95% sure I didn't just make up the origin of "diskette" although I did misremember that the earliest 8" floppies were also called diskettes (along with 5.25" floppies). I can't seem to find the source at the moment though. I remember that the technology was influenced by tape cassette data drives. I believe the first floppies had 4 partitions because data cassettes had 4 tracks. I'll try to find my source and update my answer.
    – Jay Thompson
    Commented Nov 13 at 20:37
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    The term Diskette was originally coined by IBM as a Diminutive of Disk - after all, any prior disk was 14", so 8" was quite small. Calling it Floppy as well is a later addition.
    – Raffzahn
    Commented Nov 14 at 3:28

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