I have a Toshiba laptop circa 2003/04 that I love, but that is getting really slow. I am going to do the things that people have suggested for slow computers, but I have another question.

I was thinking about getting an external hard drive and am wondering if this will help solve my problem. It didn’t get crazy slow until I downloaded a digital scrapbooking program from Creative Memories. I am wondering if I can put the program, my photos, and anything else that I download for scrapbooking, along with saving pages on the external drive and use it as a second hard drive? Or is an external only for backing things up? I don’t want to purchase one and find out that it does not do what I think/want it to do. And I don’t want to walk into Best Buy et al. and not know what I am talking about. Thank you for any help suggestions you have.

I would suggest to optimize some settings which should help with the 'speed' of the computer and as far as the ext drive, that is up to you but will not help with operating system

Posts 3 and 5 here will help
https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/computers-beginners/frequently-ask-questions-about-computers-233870.html

Thank you! I will see how that helps!

Or is an external only for backing things up?
Ya, you're problem is execution, not storage. You'd be better off buying higher-capacity memory.