Does a Crucial P5 M.2 NVMe SSD play well with macbook pro 2015?

I've bought generic ones from China on eBay. They came from a seller with a 30 day return policy, and all positive reviews and stating they come shipped with Catalina. That was a clue they should be fine for newer systems.

I ran into a problem with others that wouldn't allow me to clone a newer system than High Sierra to them unless I ran through the El Capitan to High Sierra install, and allowed it to run a built-in firmware update.

Sure enough complaints that Monterey doesn't work with third party SSDs were inaccurate at least for these generic ones, as it seems they had the firmware included in the prebundled Catalina that ran on them on first install.

So if you run into trouble with a newer OS, start out by:

1. running internet restore on them.
2. Run the High Sierra installer https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-12081
3. Then whatever newer installer, and use the migration assistant to bring over from your other data.

Make sure to get the Sintech Adapter since that is the adapter which seems to work the best at least from what I've seen reading the posts on the Apple forums from users utilizing a third party NVMe SSD. I have no experience with any third party NVMe SSD in Apple laptops except for the OWC Aura SSDs which are a drop in replacement and fully supported by OWC. Keep in mind when using a third party NVMe SSD in a Mac, neither Apple nor the SSD manufacturer will provide any support for you since you are using an unsupported configuration. In order to get support you will most likely need to confirm an SSD failure with the third party NVMe SSD installed into a regular PC.

Make sure you first install macOS Monterey while you still have your original Apple SSD installed since Monterey will refuse to install until after the system firmware has been updated which requires an original internal Apple SSD.

I also highly recommend keeping the original Apple SSD just in case you may ever need it to install a later system firmware update or perhaps a later version of macOS. Plus if you ever run into any issues with your third party SSD, then you can test the laptop by reinstalling the original Apple SSD.

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ssd/owc

If you get the Crucial model, get it from OWC. But I would only have an authorized service tech install it. Check with your local service tech if they have any difficulty installing third party components before getting it.

I just installed the Crucial P5 with the long Sintech adapter. All went well until I woke up to a flashing folder icon and Kernal Panic. Looks like the Crucial P5 doesn’t play well with any sort of Sleep (hibernation) settings. I went into my Battery prefs on my early 2015 MBP and set all sleep modes to “Never.” So far so good. Not sure what will happen when I close the MBP for an extended time. Personally, I would stick with the Samsung Evo Plus which has no issue in my 2014 Mac mini.

I did that earlier and it seems to be doing the job. I'm going to see what it does tonight when I close the lid. Hopefully, it'll wake up tomorrow morning. I'm pleased with the performance at least.

Well, closing the MBP lid for 15 minutes ticked off the Crucial and set it into another Kernel Panic. I don't see how I'll be able to use my MBP if I can't carry it with me without crashing. I may have to spring for another Samsung NVMe.

Some SSDs don't always do well when waking from sleep using the OS settings. Try unchecking "Put hard drive to sleep when possible" which will then let the SSD to control its own power levels.