Multiple libraries - asking for trouble?

Hi all,
I'm using a laptop with two external drives for backup. Internal HDD is now full and I want to move my entire photo library to an external drive. Two options I am considering:
1) Store no photos on the internal drive and use one designated external drive as a working drive instead. Might be a little slower since LR has to work through the USB connection, but seems like a viable and simple option.
2) Keep one small library of the most recent images on internal drive and work off of that. Use external drive only for the "old images" library and for backup. This would be nice as I would be able to work on recent images without having to always take an external drive along. LR's workspeed would probably be faster, too. Elsewhere I read that you CAN have two libraries in LR and choose between the two by pressing ALT on startup (I'm using Windows). However, my gut tells me that this option could result in a huge headache. What happens when I move folders of pictures from the recent library on the internal drive to the old library on the external drive? What I see happening is that LR will then no longer be able to keep track of the changes as those will still reside in the LR catalog file that is on linked to the "recent" library.
What would you recommend? Am I overthinking this? It's just that I've been burned with this kind of stuff so many times in the past (especially with iTunes) that I'm leaning to keep things as simple as possible.
Any help greatly appreciated.

Using an external drive holding the image files is entirely "do able". In fact it is the way many, including myself, work. The same files being used on both a Laptop and desktop machine. Keeping the actual lrcat and preview files on the external disk may slow down things, but isn't required, especially if you only plan on using the external drive with one machine. In this case the lrcat should be located on the primary drive with the actual image files on the external drive, this will be no slower than having the image files on the internal drive other than when building previews.
he disk is a fast one.I actually maintain the whole catalog on the external drive to aid swapping between machines, whilst this makes things a little slower than using an internal disk it isn't really that noticeable as long as the machine in use has enough RAM and the cahce is on a fast disk.

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