Mirroring Hard Drive?

[Greatguardian]

Okay, so I'm a fairly tech savvy person but I haven't tried something like this before and I'm not entirely sure how I'd go about it. Right now I have a fairly new self-built PC, but my hard drive is a 10-year old 200GB 7200RPM piece of junk that I've kept around because I don't have an external for reformatting. With Black Friday around the corner, I'll be snagging a 64GB Kingston SSD and a 1.5TB 7200 RPM Storage Drive from Newegg. Is there any way for me to mirror my Win7 installation onto the SSD without having to straight up install it from scratch? The issues I'm seeing with this are mainly the fact that copying registries over can be messy, and having to deal with directories changing when I distribute files and applications between the SSD and the Storage drive.

Would it be possible, or rather would it be at all recommended, for me to install a fresh copy of Win7 on the SSD and run applications that are on the old 200GB hard drive? I am assuming this would cause registry errors as well, since programs would have been installed on the older hard drive's copy of windows.

Honestly, my biggest concern is the fact that a lot of my installation disks for applications I use are still at my parent's house on the other side of the country, and I doubt anyone in my family would be able to properly sift through my old desk and closet looking for them. Am I just going to have to suck it up, convert my current hard drive into a storage drive, and reinstall everything I need onto the new storage drive while writing to the SSD's Windows Registry?

Related question: I bought my copy of Windows 7 as a student when I was enrolled at one university, and they sent my product key to my school email. I've since transferred schools, and no longer have access to that email and thus my product key. Is there any sort of information I can get from my currently installed copy of windows that I can use to activate it on the new hard drive? Or will I need to call Microsoft support? I can get my hands on a single free copy of Win7 Ultimate from my school if I absolutely have to but I'd rather not waste that when I could use it on a second computer.

Edit: I realize I'm rambling so basically what I'm asking is if it's possible to mirror my current Windows installation onto my SSD and move all of my actual program files onto my Storage drive (or leave them where they are, this is fine too). I want more space, and I want my OS on an SSD, but I don't want to have to torrent or re-buy all of my applications to reinstall them on a fresh OS.

[Rellikard]

It will image over with no problem but won't work 100% IMO. Friend of mine did what you wanted to, no problems. Had a 5.9 rating from Win7 Performance Index (Same as w/ a HDD). Decided to do a clean install afterwards, says he notices better performance and Win7 PI is @ 7.9. I cloned my HDD to my SSD, I had a few hick-ups in the beginning but running the Intel SSD optimizer tool once a week and no problems afterwards. But a clean OS install is recommended. The only reason I haven't re-installed is I hate re-installing FFXI...

PS: You plan on Junctioning your Program Files folder to the 1.5TB HDD?

[Greatguardian]

It will image over with no problem but won't work 100% IMO. Friend of mine did what you wanted to, no problems. Had a 5.9 rating from Win7 Performance Index (Same as w/ a HDD). Decided to do a clean install afterwards, says he notices better performance and Win7 PI is @ 7.9. I cloned my HDD to my SSD, I had a few hick-ups in the beginning but running the Intel SSD optimizer tool once a week and no problems afterwards. But a clean OS install is recommended. The only reason I haven't re-installed is I hate re-installing FFXI...

PS: You plan on Junctioning your Program Files folder to the 1.5TB HDD?

Yeah. I'd have to move Program Files over to the storage drive, since it's way bigger than the 35-40~ GB I'd have left after OS installation on the SSD. Is it going to be possible for me to mirror only my OS installation and associated files onto the SSD while leaving everything else where it is? Or am I going to have to move most of my files from my old HDD to the new Storage drive first, delete things off the old drive until it's under 64GB, and then mirror it?