alt Hacker NewsFwiw, SATA and NVMe are mutually incompatible concepts for a single device; SATA drives use AHCI to wrap ATA commands in a SCSI-shaped queuing mechanism called command lists over the SATA bus, while NVMe (M.2/U.2/add-in) drives talk NVMe protocol (multiple queues) over PCIe.
For a drive, yes, SATA and NVMe are mutually exclusive. The M.2 slot can provide both options. But if you have a machine with a M.2 slot that's only wired for SATA but not PCIe, your choices for drives to put in that slot have been quite limited for a long time.