Sorry for asking, especially as I've trawled through many similar questions. Mine is of the most basic element I think as this kind of thing is really out of my ball park.

Anyway I wanted to if by installing ubuntu on my old laptop hdd (I now use it as external storage), can I run it on my laptop which has windows installed.

I can't take the chance of installing on the laptop as I'm currently studying, and I have a years worth of work on here (most backed up elsewhere), and will be using it a lot.

However there are some programmes I can use if I can get ubuntu that will be helpful for one or two classes.

Sorry for the very basic question.