Working off an External Hard Drive

[Minimadj]

Hi, I have the 2011 iMac, it's the base model configured with a 500GB Hard Drive. I am filling it up rather quickly as I have a large iTunes library and an ever growing photo library as I'm rather snap happy.
I thought about buying a 1/2TB external hard drive to work off of and just use my iMac's HDD as a place to install software & apps.
Is it possible to have my iTunes library & Aperture library on an external HDD and work from this?
I've been researching and would Firewire 800 be a workable option? I understand that it's an external HDD but will I be left waiting when I double click to play a song, or when I open Aperture and do some photo editing?

This takes me onto my last question:
Can I then also buy another large capacity USB Hard Drive to back up the whole lot?

If anyone can assist me it would be much appreciated.
Kind regards

 

[Dysfunction]

FW 800 would be more workable then a USB drive, I've used a networked drive to work on photos using Ps and Lr. It just takes some time. If you want full speed.. go thunderbolt.

and yes, you can back everything up to a USB drive.

 

[iNicole]

Pretty much everything the guy said above, FW would definitely be the better option since most Apple products just simply started out using (and still do sometimes use) FW connectivity.

I use a USB connector for my 1 TB external though and see no difficulty using it, so if it really comes down to just USBs you know now that it's really not a problem using those either.

Here's a decent capacity flashdrive too since that's also what you're looking for
Newegg.com - Team SR1 32GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive (Red) Model TG032GSR1R3