A Seagate part number encodes the capacity, the product family and the generation, and once you can read it you can tell a SkyHawk from an IronWolf and a current model from the one it replaced without looking anything up. This matters because the letters are the only part of the label that distinguishes drives sold under identical product names.
Have the part number in front of you? Paste it into the resolver and get the verified answer with the manufacturer document it came from.
Every Seagate 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch drive number starts with ST, followed by the capacity in gigabytes, then a family code of one or two letters, then digits identifying the generation and variant.
Take ST4000VX013. ST marks it as Seagate. 4000 is the capacity in gigabytes, so 4TB. VX is the SkyHawk surveillance family. 013 is the generation and variant code.
The capacity digits are the easiest part and the least ambiguous: ST1000 is 1TB, ST8000 is 8TB, ST24000 is 24TB. There is no unit trickery, the number is gigabytes.
The family letters are where the useful information lives, and the generation digits are where the trap lives, because two drives differing only in those last digits can carry opposite recording technologies.
These are the codes you will actually meet on consumer and NAS drives. Each example below is a model number in our verified table with its own page and manufacturer source.
| Letters | Family | Built for | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| DM | BarraCuda 3.5in | Desktop and compute | ST4000DM004 |
| LM | BarraCuda 2.5in | Laptops and consoles | ST2000LM015 |
| DX | FireCuda 3.5in | Hybrid drive with NAND cache | ST2000DX002 |
| VN | IronWolf | NAS, multi-bay, continuous | ST8000VN004 |
| NE / NT | IronWolf Pro | NAS, higher workload, 5yr | ST16000NT001 |
| VX | SkyHawk | Surveillance recorders | ST6000VX001 |
| VE | SkyHawk AI | Surveillance with analytics | ST16000VE002 |
| NM | Exos | Enterprise nearline | ST16000NM001G |
| AS | Archive | Cold archival storage | ST8000AS0002 |
Every model number here resolves to a page with the Seagate document that establishes its recording technology.
The digits after the family letters distinguish generations and variants, and this is where a great deal of confusion originates because they are not descriptive. There is no rule that says a higher number is newer or better, and they carry no information about recording technology on their face.
The clearest example on this site is at 1TB. ST1000DM010 and ST1000DM014 are both 1TB BarraCuda drives. The first is conventionally recorded; the second replaced it and is shingled. Nothing in the number tells you that, and the product name is identical on both.
The same applies in SkyHawk. ST4000VX007 and ST4000VX013 are both 4TB. Seagate's datasheet states the first as conventional and the second as shingled.
This is the entire reason our resolver exists. The generation digits change the answer and cannot be decoded, they have to be looked up against the manufacturer's document.
Model numbers frequently appear with a suffix after a hyphen, such as ST1000DM010-2EP102. That trailing block identifies the carton, the firmware revision and the market it was packaged for. It does not change the drive.
For the recording question, everything after the base model number can be ignored, and our resolver strips it automatically, paste the whole label exactly as printed and it will still resolve.
Retail boxed versions sometimes carry a separate SKU entirely rather than a suffix, which is more common with Toshiba than with Seagate. Where that happens we list both and they resolve to the same answer.
The one suffix worth attention is where Seagate distinguishes sector format, for example 512e against 4Kn on enterprise drives. That does not affect recording technology but it does affect compatibility with some controllers, and it is stated in the model number on Exos-class products.
If you paste a part number and we do not have it, the decoding above still gets you somewhere useful. The capacity is unambiguous, and the family letters tell you which product line and therefore which datasheet to look for on Seagate's site.
What you cannot infer is the recording technology, and we would rather you knew that than guessed from a neighbouring model. Within BarraCuda the answer varies by generation at the same capacity; within SkyHawk two 4TB models differ. There is no safe inference.
Search it in our resolver anyway. Misses are logged and they decide which models get verified next, so an unanswered search is genuinely useful rather than a dead end.
It identifies the manufacturer, from Seagate Technology. Every Seagate 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch drive number begins with it, followed by the capacity in gigabytes and then the family and generation codes.
They identify the generation and variant, and they are not descriptive, a higher number is not necessarily newer or better. Critically, they can change the recording technology: ST1000DM010 is conventional and ST1000DM014 is shingled, and nothing in the digits says so.
All three are NAS drives. VN is standard IronWolf. NE and NT are both IronWolf Pro, with NT being the newer generation that carries a higher workload rating. Two Pro drives of the same capacity can therefore be rated differently depending on which of those letters they carry.
No, and this is the most important thing on this page. The generation digits change the answer and encode nothing you can read. It has to be looked up against Seagate's own datasheet, which is what our resolver does.
Carton, firmware revision and packaging market. It does not change the drive and it does not affect the recording question. Paste the whole label into the resolver anyway, it strips the suffix and matches the base model.