Macbook Pro Performance with aftermarket flash drives

[Srom89]

I recently purchased a second hand 2014 15" MBP which has had a Western Digital Flash Hard Drive installed. I've only ever had macs with original drives. I had a problem restoring from backup (now resolved) which got me nervous:

- big sur was installed
- when I went to restore mode (CMD R) it booted in Mavericks restore mode and the HD didn't show up as an option to either reinstall OS or from backup.
- I got help from a local mac shop who did a fresh install of Catalina which was ready in setup screen so I was able to restore from my backup.
- I restored from backup successfully although near the end of the process a black screen with question mark flashed up. I restarted the laptop and since then I've had no issues with the laptop (only had it a few days)
- I'm considering returning the laptop and finding one with an original mac drive as it's got me nervous about whether I'll have problems booting in the future especially as I'm also planning on boot camping, and I'm not planning on becoming a computer programmer!

Have you had good experiences with after market non apple hard drives in 2014 models?
Thanks!

 

[Audit13]

Good information here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/upgrading-2013-2014-macbook-pro-ssd-to-m-2-nvme.2034976/

 

[itsmeaustend]

Having an "original drive" will solve nothing by itself. You can run a Mac with third-party drives just fine.

There must be something else going on. Maybe a loose connection somewhere (The question mark indicates it cant detect the drive). Maybe have the Mac Shop you went to open her up and check the drive is plugged in correctly?

Another alternative is the drive could be failing. Have them also run a SMART test on it.

Returning it would be my last option after these troubleshooting steps.