# HAMR vs CMR vs SMR: What Each Term Actually Means

> HAMR is heat-assisted magnetic recording, a write technology used to increase areal density. CMR uses conventional non-overlapping track layout, while SMR overlaps tracks to increase density and needs additional write management. HAMR can therefore sit underneath either CMR or SMR. Seagate currently lists Mozaic HAMR CMR drives at 28TB, 30TB and 32TB in Exos and IronWolf Pro, while also listing separate high-capacity SMR Exos products.

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## Primary source
- [HAMR vs CMR vs SMR: What Each Term Actually Means](https://cloudzat.com/hamr-vs-cmr-vs-smr/index.md): Clean Markdown version of the full Cloudzat guidance.

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