We study the chemical and spectro-photometric evolution of galactic disks with detailed models calibrated on the Milky Way and using simple scaling relations, based on currently popular semi-analytic models of galaxy formation. We compare our results to a large body of observational data on present day galactic disks, including: disk sizes and central surface brightness, Tully-Fisher relations in various wavelength bands, colour-colour and colour-magnitude relations, gas fractions vs. magnitudes and colours, abundances vs. local and integrated properties, as well as spectra for different galactic rotational velocities. Despite the extremely simple nature of our models, we find satisfactory agreement with all those observables, provided the timescale for star formation in low mass disks is longer than for more massive ones. This assumption is apparently in contradiction with the standard picture of hierarchical cosmology. We find, however, that it is extremely successfull in reproducing major features of present day disks, like the change in the slope of the Tully-Fisher relation with wavelength, the fact that more massive galaxies are on average ``redder than low mass ones (a generic problem of standard hierarchical models) and the metallicity-luminosity relation for spirals. It is concluded that, on a purely empirical basis, this new picture at least as successful as the standard one. Observations at high redshifts could help to distinguish between the two possibilities.
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