External Hard Drive - Back up and/or storage

Hello!
I bought a new 1 TB Hard Drive today, and I intended to use it as an external storage unit, I have to many pictures and videos on my Macbook and I thought that it would be better to keep them somewhere else, and free some space and maybe it would work faster. Also, my macbook is 5 years old and I am afraid it may just stop working suddenly and I would loose everything. The thing is, when I plugged the Hard drive in, I got a message asking if I wanted to use Time Machine to back up my computer. Now, I am not very good with computers, and it does sound good to have a back up of everything, but a back up is kind of an extra copy - correct? If I do the backup only I would still have all my pictures and videos on my computer, right? Afterwards could I delete them from my computer? or if I delete them when the backup is updated it would actually delete them from the Hard drive as well?
Could I use the Hard Drive to back up my computer, AND to save my files? If so, how do I do it?
Thank you so much for your help!
"Macbook 2009"

Never use a backup drive for storage or vice-versa. If you us one drive for both and the drive fails, then you lose both. Use separate drives for each. Note that Time Machine is not intended to also substitute for storage space because it will delete older files over time.

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