What's the difference between SATA, mSATA, eSATA, SATA Express, SATA III, NVMe, M.2, and PCIe?
I have looked for the answer, and while many website explain the difference between some of these terms, there is none that clearly explains the relation between all of these things together (or at least, none that I have found). Moreover, there seems to be different versions of all these technologies, which only left me in more confusion.
Here's what I know:
There are two things here, the physical ports on the motherboard, and the underlying data transfer channels.
SATA is an older data channel technology made for hard disk drives.
SATA is also the name of a physical port on the motherboard.
PCIe is a physical port for graphics cards, not a data channel.
M.2 is a physical port, nothing else.
NVMe is something I still don't understand.
Am I right or wrong?
Also if I may add, Why do some SSDs say they support NVMe, while some say they support SATA ( I thought SATA is for hard disks only)?
To simplify my question, what kind of SSD is faster, and how much?
A message to the moderators, I understand that this post may seem like a duplicate, but it really probably isn't. I have seen posts that discuss the relation between some of these terms, but not all of them in a single post, and not in a clear way. So I ask them to keep this post open until it gets at least a few answers. Thanks for understanding.