My HD is almost full. I need to add space. Can I use an external HD to continue using my startup disc as it is?

My HD is almost full. I need to add space. Can I use an external HD to continue using my startup disc as it is?
I create music and have run out of space. the message says 'your startup disc is almost full', and i just thought maybe buying an external hard drive and using it as the startup disc or whatever would do the trick. Does anyone know? Thanks!

External hard drives are relatively inexpensive...see some of those on OWC, www.macsales.com
You can use a large external drive to provide additional space by simply saving material to that volume instead of the startup disk.  You can also partition the external drive to use part for Time Machine backups, and another partition for extended space.  Or a third partition for a clone of the boot system made by Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper, both free downloads, so should the internal drive have problems you could always boot from the external partition.
All of that can be done from Disk Utility.
Keep in mind that Mac OS X gets very unhappy when there is less than 15% of the startup disk space free.

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