Have a netbook and also had external hard drive.  Bought somesoftware and tried to load it and it wouldn't.  Checked to see if there was a driver update for my external drive and found that many had problems with the drive.  So I bought the new drive.  Still had problems loading software.  Finally got manufacturer of software to provide new copy of software.  Problem was with software.  New drive worked great, even when I loaded another software program.  New drive is more compact and much easier to use than the old one.