alt Hacker NewsFor 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.
There were even M.2 PCIe-connected AHCI drives - both not-SATA and not-NVMe. Samsung SM951 was one. You can find them on ebay but not otherwise.