I looked on the Sony site to find additional information. I think that this link describes your laptop -
http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores ... avigation=and it contains the following info -
Sound System : Intel® High Definition Audio
Backlight Technology : LED
Resolution : 1366x768
Screen Size : 14"4
ENERGY STAR® : 5.0
EPEATâ„¢ : Gold
ROHS® : Compliant
Multimedia Card Reader : One Memory Stick PRO™ media slot (Standard/Duo) with MagicGate® functionality One ExpressCard® /34 media slot One Secure Digital (SD memory card) media slot
Action Buttons : VAIO, Assist, Wireless on / off, Display Off
Computer Type : Notebook
Pointing Device : Electro-static touchpad (Multi-Finger)
Type of Use : Portable
Chipset : Mobile Intel® PM55 Express Chipset
Graphics Processor : NVIDIA® GeForce® 310M GPU with Total Available Graphics Memory of 2007MB (max.)12
Graphics Video RAM : 256MB dedicated video RAM
Max. External Display Resolution via HDMIâ„¢ : 1920x108015
Max. External Resolution via VGA : 2048x1536
Camera : Built-in MOTION EYE® camera and microphone with face-tracking technology
Keyboard : QWERTY, 82 keys with 2.0mm stroke and 19.05mm pitch
DC-In : 1
This info that I found does not include (so please add)
-- the capacity and the rpm of the laptop hard drive
-- the type of ports available for connecting the external hard drive (I suspect that it would be USB 2 port).
FYI - I do suspect that your laptop is underpowered: however I posted the above details to make it easier for others to post more specific comments and suggestions.