It helps in these detailed areas of discussion to be precise. m.2 is a form factor, or really sort of a family of form factors. SATA and NVMe are protocols an

It helps in these detailed areas of discussion to be precise. m.2 is a form factor, or really sort of a family of form factors. SATA and NVMe are protocols and interfaces. In m.2, there are 12 key indexes. Drives use indexes B and M. m.2 support both NVMe and SATA. NVMe drives for m.2 are keyed at index M. M.2 SATA drives are keyed at B or often both B and M. m.2 supports SATA and NVME, sometimes but not always in the same slot. For NVMe speeds, you need an NVMe drive. Those come in PCIe x2 and PCIe x4 at PCIe 3.x and PCIe 4.0 revisions of the standard. The drive and slot must both support this. m.2 SATA 3 drives don't have two cables to them like a 2.5" SATA 3 drive usually does. It goes in an m.2 slot that supports SATA and is keyed appropriatly. m.2 also has various lengths: 40mm, 60mm, and 80mm. Some drives are up to 110mm and many boards provide for that. The "2260", "2280" and so on are drive sizes, 22m by the length. m.2 also supports non-drive cards like GPS, Bluetooth, WLAN, WWAN, or NFC. Another, earlier than m.2, standard allowed drives with a SATA interface on a card with no cables. That was known as mSATA.