Bicycle Mechanics - Disc brake question...

I have disc brakes on my mt bike and was talking to a coworker about how great I think they are. He said that he had talked to the local Bike and Hike down the street and they told him not to upgrade to them because it was very hard on the spokes. Being new to a bicycle with disc breaks I was wondering how much truth there was to this if any?

Heard the same story myself. Probably has at least some to do with the quality of the components. The argument I heard did make sense (all the breaking load at the hub, wheel putting a lot of torque on the spokes)so....

I don't know if it is the same thing but I broke the flange on a 40 spoke hub while using a drum brake. The flange broke while I was braking downhill towing a BOB trailer. It broke causing me to lose three spokes at the flange. I was still able to hobble into a small city campground. I have only one bike with disc brakes and have been wondering about this very subject but this is the first that I have heard of this issue. The bike with the disc brakes was not the one I was using when the flange broke. I will be watching this with much interest...

I guess it might be true but it doesn't sound logical to me. There are an awful lot of disc brake bikes in use and, if spoke breakage were common, I'm sure we'd have heard more about it by now.

I assume wheels designed to use disc brakes are built to handle the extra torque loads. That's one reason you can't add disc brakes to an existing non-disc forks. It's more than just the mounting tabs, the loads are very differnt than those from rim brakes.