Paste the part number from your drive label and get the answer with the manufacturer document it came from. We resolve by exact model rather than by capacity, because within one family at one capacity the answer frequently goes both ways, and a list that answers by capacity gets one of those models wrong.
209 models verified · 21 confirmed shingled · 24 with documented source conflicts ·
10 in-stock listings · SATA, CMR or ePMR per the manufacturer's own document for that exact part number, never inferred. A drive missing from this table is not shown to be SMR - its recording technology is simply not yet sourced. · ranked by live cost per tb, refreshed about once a day
| Drive | Capacity | Interface | Recording | Condition | $/TB | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seagate SkyHawk AI 16TB ST16000VE002 ST16000VE002 | 16TB | SATA-6G | CMR | REFURB | $31.25 | $500 | Buy on Amazon |
| Seagate SkyHawk 6TB ST6000VX001 ST6000VX001 | 6TB | SATA-6G | CMR | REFURB | $31.67 | $190 | Buy on Amazon |
| Seagate SkyHawk 6TB ST6000VX001 ST6000VX001 | 6TB | SATA-6G | CMR | REFURB | $31.67 | $190 | Buy on Amazon |
| WD Red Pro 18TB WD181KFGX WD181KFGX | 18TB | SATA-6G | CMR | REFURB | $32.72 | $589 | Buy on Amazon |
| WD Red Pro 18TB WD181KFGX WD181KFGX | 18TB | SATA-6G | CMR | REFURB | $32.72 | $589 | Buy on Amazon |
| WD Red Pro 6TB WD6003FFBX WD6003FFBX | 6TB | SATA-6G | CMR | REFURB | $33.33 | $200 | Buy on Amazon |
| WD Red Pro 12TB WD121KFBX WD121KFBX | 12TB | SATA-6G | CMR | REFURB | $33.33 | $400 | Buy on Amazon |
| Seagate IronWolf 10TB NAS ST10000VN0008 ST10000VN0008 | 10TB | SATA-6G | CMR | REFURB | $34.00 | $340 | Buy on Amazon |
| WD Red Plus 10TB WD101EFBX WD101EFBX | 10TB | SATA-6G | CMR | REFURB | $34.00 | $340 | Buy on Amazon |
| WD Purple 6TB WD63PURZ WD63PURZ | 6TB | SATA-6G | CMR | REFURB | $35.00 | $210 | Buy on Amazon |
These are the drives to keep out of arrays. Each one is stated as SMR by its own manufacturer, not inferred by us. They are not defective and they are not bad value for sequential work, they are simply wrong for anything that rebuilds.
We publish the disagreement rather than quietly picking the convenient answer. On each of these pages an amber box sets out which document says what, and the newer and more specific one decides the verdict.
180 more hard drive part numbers appear in our price catalogue without a manufacturer document we have found that states their recording technology. Each page says what we do know - maker, capacity, interface - and links the nearest model whose answer is sourced. They carry no CMR or SMR label here because we do not have one to give.
Almost every CMR/SMR reference on the web answers at the wrong resolution. They tell you that a brand's 2TB desktop drives are shingled, or that a NAS line is conventional, and most of the time that is close enough to be useful and occasionally it is simply wrong. The failure case is not rare: it is the exact situation somebody lands here to resolve.
Seagate sells a 1TB BarraCuda called the ST1000DM010 and a 1TB BarraCuda called the ST1000DM014. Same brand, same family, same capacity, same shelf. The first is conventionally recorded, the second is shingled, and the second replaced the first. A capacity-level list has to pick one answer for “BarraCuda 1TB” and will be wrong for half the drives sold under that description. Our side-by-side of those two is the clearest illustration of why the distinction is worth the effort.
The same problem appears wherever a manufacturer refreshed a product without renaming it, which is most of them. We resolve at the part number because that is the level at which the answer is stable, and we name the document behind every answer so you can check it rather than trust us.
Because within one family at one capacity the answer can go both ways. A Seagate BarraCuda 1TB is conventionally recorded if it is an ST1000DM010 and shingled if it is an ST1000DM014, same brand, same name, same size, opposite technology. Every list that answers by capacity gets one of those two wrong.
Each one is read off the manufacturer's own datasheet, product manual or official recording-technology disclosure, and every page names and links the document it came from. Retailer listings, forums, wikis and AI-written articles are not sources here. If we could not verify a model from a manufacturer document, it is marked unpublished and renders a dash rather than a guess.
It happens more than you would expect, and we publish the disagreement instead of hiding it. The newer and more specific document decides the verdict, and an amber box on that model's page explains which source says what and why the verdict stands. Seagate's SkyHawk line is the clearest current example.
It depends entirely on the write pattern. For sequential work, archives, media libraries, backup targets, files written once and read often, a shingled drive is genuinely fine and cheaper. For anything that rebuilds, resilvers or writes randomly for hours, it is the wrong tool, because overlapping tracks turn sustained random writes into rewrites of neighbouring data.
Search it anyway: the box logs misses, and those searches decide the next data batch. Meanwhile our model-number guides explain what the letters in a Seagate, WD or Toshiba part number mean, which frequently gets you to the right family and generation on your own.
Yes. A drive labelled ST1000DM010-2EP102 is an ST1000DM010 with a carton and firmware suffix, and the search strips separators and matches the base model. Paste the whole thing exactly as it appears on the label.