What is the difference between NVMe and SATA?

Solid State Drives (SSDs) come in various form factors and protocols. The first generation SSDs were 2.5-inch form factor using SATA interface and AHCI protocol, which are standards originally designed for mechanical hard drives, allowing easy upgrades from HDDs to SSDs. Later, the native flash storage protocol NVMe emerged, enabling faster transfer speeds and is applied in some of the latest high-end PCs and laptops. All NVMe SSDs use M.2, U.2, or AIC PCIe interfaces. SATA 2.5-inch SSDs have been available for a while and are still used in many computers today. Learn more about the differences between NVMe and SATA.