  We study the formation of galaxies in a Lambda-CDM Universe using high
resolution hydrodynamical simulations with a multiphase treatment of gas,
cooling and feedback, focusing on the formation of discs. Our simulations
follow eight haloes similar in mass to the Milky Way and extracted from a large
cosmological simulation without restriction on spin parameter or merger
history. This allows us to investigate how the final properties of the
simulated galaxies correlate with the formation histories of their haloes. We
find that, at z = 0, none of our galaxies contain a disc with more than 20 per
cent of its total stellar mass. Four of the eight galaxies nevertheless have
well-formed disc components, three have dominant spheroids and very small
discs, and one is a spheroidal galaxy with no disc at all. The z = 0 spheroids
are made of old stars, while discs are younger and formed from the inside-out.
Neither the existence of a disc at z = 0 nor the final disc-to-total mass ratio
seems to depend on the spin parameter of the halo. Discs are formed in haloes
with spin parameters as low as 0.01 and as high as 0.05; galaxies with little
or no disc component span the same range in spin parameter. Except for one of
the simulated galaxies, all have significant discs at z > ~2, regardless of
their z = 0 morphologies. Major mergers and instabilities which arise when
accreting cold gas is misaligned with the stellar disc trigger a transfer of
mass from the discs to the spheroids. In some cases, discs are destroyed, while
in others, they survive or reform. This suggests that the survival probability
of discs depends on the particular formation history of each galaxy. A
realistic Lambda-CDM model will clearly require weaker star formation at high
redshift and later disc assembly than occurs in our models.
