Mainboard Communication Protocal

Interface/Slot

PATA

SATA, mSATA

M.2

PCI-E

Bus/Line

PATA

SATA3

PCI-E

Driver software

IDE

The very old one, supports mostly PATA

AHCI

Technology after IDE supports mostly HD and SSD, but it is designed to fit HD better, with only 1 queue available, each queue with 32 commands

NVMe

Technology after AHCI, not many devices are supported. Mostly SSD. With 64K queue available, each queue with 64K commands

RAID

Technology designed for Redundency and Fault Tolerance requirement.