How to install Snow Leopard onto external hard drive.

I'm currently running on 10.5.8, and I just bought the Snow Leopard installation disc to update to 10.6.3.
My mac has been running on an external hard drive for about a year. The internal just stopped working.
I want to  install Snow Leopard onto my external hard drive, but all of my files are on there, and I read that if I do the install, all of the data will be erased.
If I used time machine to back up the files before I do the install, are they at risk of being erased, since they will be back-uped on the external?
This is probably super obvious, but I want to be very careful with this.
Any help is very much appreciated!
^__^

1. The data won't be erased unless a problem occurs.
2. The Time Machine backup should be on a different drive, as drives can fail.
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