data recovery - Best way to copy files from a hard disk with no OS

I have a 1 TB hard disk with no OS in it. What will be the best way to copy files to an external hdd from unaffected partitions?

I have a Live Windows USB. I learnt that you can boot into Command Promt and open Notebook.exe and from Open files, you can send data to an external drive.

I am considering giving Ubuntu a chance here. I plan to install Ubuntu on the partition where Windows used to be. Now will I be able to boot into Ubuntu and simply copy files from other partitions into the external hdd?

My internal HDD is of course of NTFS type.

Now I cannot install Windows to my HDD because if I delete the partition which used to be C:/, a chunk of unallocated space is created in the middle of the memory segment. And in my experience, I have seen that Windows installation media can only create a new volume at the beginning or at the end of the space. The error I get is Windows can't create a partition.

Please let me know if it is possible to install Ubuntu there and access the data at the other partitions and safely copy them to external hdd.

I have heard about ntfs-3g and not sure how it works. But to even go there, I have to be able to install Ubuntu in the first place.

I was using Windows 10 before, if it matters.