External HDDs for Music Production?

DefaultM

I've run out of space on my Macbook, and I think the issue is that I use that one SSD drive for recording audio directly on to, running my DAW, running my samples and plug ins etc.
I'm assuming it would be a lot better to split the work over the internal SSD and an external HDD, but I'm unsure what to use each one for. 
Would I be better recording audio on to the SSD and having all my samples and software installed on the external HDD, or vice versa?

Is there a particularly good external HDD that I should be looking at? I only really need 1TB but could go for 2TB.

I've also been looking at this as my laptop only has 2 UBS 3.0 ports and a Thunderbolt (2?) port.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anker-PowerIQ-Charging-Samsung-Motorola/dp/B00VE4UJD4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478353205&sr=8-1&keywords=anker+7+port+usb+3.0+hub

Will that be of any use or will it slow things down? I've got my Axe FX 2 connected by USB, probably a few external HDDs and a midi keyboard as well.

Axe_meister

I'd say archive stuff on the extneral HDD.
For the song you are working on use the SSD.
Reason: Whilst USB 3 has enough bandwidth to cope with recording, it may introduce additional latency.
If you do have to use the external USB disk make sure you switch off the Mac Search facility. In my experience
it can kick in at the wrong times at can be a complete disk hog.

DefaultM

So would you say to store my samples on the external hdd as well as I'll only use them every so often?

sweepy

I use an 8Tb USB 3 7200 rpm with my MB Pro with no issues whatsoever . I use this to store my Samples/Romplers AND  to record

DefaultM

So you would save your software and plug ins to the internal hdd and then record to the external one/save your sessions and samples to it?

My only concern with having an hdd of that size is that you can obviously get a lot in there, but it's a lot to lose as well. I was going to buy a few smaller ones and have back ups, but I don't know how often external drives fail these days?
I bought myself a really expensive one about 8 years ago and one day I plugged it in to find it had just randomly corrupted.

Axe_meister

Plug Ins will be resident in memory so hard disk is only relevant during startup.
The audio tracks are read/written to disk(unless modern software chaches everything in to memory, in which case drive performance is not relevant until you flush to disk after you have recorded)