The Seagate Exos 20TB (ST20000NM002H) uses CMR recording.
Part-number reference: ST20000NM002H — decoded segments, sibling variants and the warranty check. Live rankings this model belongs to: every 20TB hard drive. Product pages for this part number: Seagate Exos X20 20TB (no current offer).
Verified against: Seagate Exos data sheet DS2046.1 (Dec 2025), SATA ISE table, read 2026-10-01 · Checked
Conventional recording writes tracks side by side without overlap, so a write never forces the drive to rewrite neighbouring data. That makes the ST20000NM002H safe for every use including RAID, ZFS, a NAS, and anything with sustained random writes. A rebuild or a resilver on this drive behaves the way the array expects, which is the whole reason the distinction matters. There is no recording-technology reason to avoid this drive for any workload.
| Model number | ST20000NM002H |
| Brand | Seagate |
| Family | Exos |
| Capacity | 20TB |
| Form factor | 3.5" |
| Rotational speed | — |
| Cache | — |
| Recording technology | CMR |
| Workload rate | — |
| Warranty | — |
| Status | Current |
| Replaced by | — |
A dash means we have not found a manufacturer document stating that field for this exact model. We leave it blank rather than filling it from a retailer listing.
It is CMR. That comes from Seagate Exos data sheet DS2046.1 (Dec 2025), SATA ISE table, read 2026-10-01, Seagate's own documentation for this exact part number.
Yes: Seagate Exos data sheet DS2046.1 (Dec 2025), SATA ISE table, read 2026-10-01 states CMR for the ST20000NM002H, and conventional recording means a write never forces neighbouring tracks to be rewritten, so rebuilds and resilvers behave normally. Check the workload rating and warranty for your duty cycle separately.