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I've got a spare 30g SSD lying around that isn't doing anything. Would it be possible to put it in my current rig as a spare drive and run Ubuntu off it (just to play around). I read that windows 7 doesn't support dual booting and needs a boot manager to do it.
If I install Ubuntu to the spare SSD would this be easy to set up without changing the boot order in the bios? (not too familiar with dual booting at all)
As I understand it, if you install Ubuntu, it will replace the Windows 7 bootloader as default with its own loader, i.e. Grub. Then you can choose to boot either Ubuntu or "other", and "other" will then load the Windows 7 bootloader and continue the process.
If you want to get Windows 7 back again on its own, you pull out the 30GB SSD and use the repair option off the Windows 7 install CD.
Most modern BIOS allow you to press F12 at POST, and it'll present you with a menu asking which drive to boot off :)
As SnootyJim says, install the SSD and then boot from an Ubuntu CD, select install and pretty much accept all the defaults (telling Ubuntu to install on the SSD) and Ubuntu will automatically install the GRUB bootloader and configure for multiboot.
However, Windows 7 bootloader supports also supports multi-booting fine, check out this tutorial if you want to retain Windows 7 bootloader: