Yeah, Western Digital tends to cheap it out on the connections, as far as I can remember. I was told back in college (now getting to be twenty years ago, so I'm surprised it hasn't changed--it can't possibly be a market strategy) not to bother with them, and haven't really looked back.
I mean, I'll buy the physical drive if it's cheap enough and I'm not storing anything critical there, because they're all probably manufactured by the same Chinese factories. But even there, Seagate drives tend to be quieter, which is kind of important to me.
And the externals are never trustworthy, no matter what company produces them. The parts beyond the drive itself are almost always substandard. However, once you know that, they're not a bad deal for the drive inside, since they're usually cheaper. I'm amazed more people aren't suspicious about them...
"Cloud"-wise, I can also mostly recommend the "Pogoplug" product line. I got one surplus for a song, and it's basically a tiny computer with three USB ports and an ethernet connection. Plug in your favorite drives using a USB adapter, connect it to the network, and the PC-side software pretends it's a local drive (with obligatory Android and iOS apps I've never used). You can also get the files through the web and create shared folders for people.
The only serious down-side is that it doesn't work without their servers. But people have also rewritten the software (which I haven't tried) to work in other configurations, as I understand it.
