iTunes and iPhoto on external drive

hi, i am considering using a MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro (Retina Display) as my primary computer.

i would like to know how it would be possible to transfer the iTunes and iPhoto libraries onto an external drive as these two laptops have limited storage capacity, i.e. 256GB for the Air and rather costly 256GB, 512GB or 768GB Flash Memory for the Retina Display.

is it also possible to assign the Documents and Downloads directories to an external drive and if so how would i do that?

lastly, is storage on Hard Disk Drives more reliable than on Flash Memory?

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    Mac OS X does not have a read-write NTFS driver, meaning that you can not copy files to most external drives unless you re-format the drive with HFS or FAT32. Reformatting a drive will delete all of the files on it. As for reliability, flash memory is usually considered more reliable than hard disks. Hard disks have moving parts, which can wear out over time. Flash memory has a different problem where the memory will "forget" its contents after about 10 to 20 years. The most reliable storage medium is the gold CD-R, with an estimated life of about 300 years.

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