Dual use for External Hard Drive?

I'm looking to purchase an external hard drive to back up my Macbook.  I realize Time Machine does a lot of the work for you, but I'm wondering if I have a 500G HD, and want to back it up on an external HD, will I be able to use that same external HD for random storage as well (e.g. pictures)?
Either way, my other question is how much space to purchase?
Thanks

Yes, you can use the drive for purposes other than Time Machine backups, but you would not want to store "original" files on the drive (you have no backups if you do this).
Buy as much space as you can possibly afford, since drives always have a way of filling up about twice as fast as you might have planned.
The rule of thumb with Time Machine is that you need at least twice as much space as the size of the drive on your Mac and more is better.

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