Single USB C with Power Delivery---Max Wattage Up to 240W---Voltage 5V up to 48V (negotiable)---Max Amps 3A to 5A
Pretty sure you won't get PD or voltage other than 5V. Even if the host port were a "charging port", your device (the drive) wouldn't be capable of doing / requesting for PD. (Also
definitely not leveraging a different voltage.) Is the 3A@5V the absolute max
in reality when a C port is
not doing PD? No idea. (But also, AFAIK, not all C ports offer 3A@5V. Some may offer just 1.5A@5V.)
2USB-A Ports via Y Cable---Max Wattage ~15W total---Voltage Fixed at 5V---Max Amps 1.5A per port (total 3A)
I have no idea whether there's any
de facto standard for A ports, but AFAIK technically they are expected to offer just 500mA or 900mA (USB 2.0 o 3.0), even when in reality they probably offer more on most hosts.
Also as I mentioned, some people
claim that because the power plug lacks the data link whatsoever, it therefore cannot "negotiate" anything but receive some 100mA "baseline". Although I never measured one myself and I kinda doubt that because it would mean such a popular solution is essentially a "hoax". (Well, unless +0.5W could make a difference :S)
Either way, my point is in case someone's drive requires more than 15W (or a single C port on their host give less than that), they can try to use two C-A adapters and a Y-cable (with two A plugs). (That is, it
could give the drive more juice than plugging the Y-cable into two A ports on the host / using a C-micro_B cable.) -- addressing:
It does not mean that the drive performs flawlessly and will read my entire collections.....it is however, an improvement non the less.
even when you might not mean / it is really not powering issue anymore. I don't really have much experience with slim drive, especially not LG ones, so I don't really know how much they
could need. (And Google AI told me that SATA can do 5A@5V=25W.)
---
If the Y-cable didn't work, then I'm pretty sure it didn't offer the drive 15W, because that's most likely how much the C port has offered it. (Btw, even if the C port could offer more than 3A "PD-less", I doubt that the C-micro_B cable can do more than 3A either -- not that I'm suggesting this "type" of cable has technical limitation, but just that it's unlikely / less likely "expensive" enough to be "physically capable".)
(With that said, AFAIK you do need C-C cable / "use case" for more than 3A@5V / PD because the E-marker thing is required, even when you can do more than that with proprietary
charging protocol that works over C-A cables -- which is irrelevant to the "use case" here.)