Partition hard drives.

Yes, create a partition out of the unallocated space on the ssd of the size you want at the beginning of your Windows 7 installation. Then after your OS install, go into disk management and initialize the second partition in the remaining space on the drive.

Will that lock the OS partition and then default all other data somewhere else?
or is that just creating a second partition?

No, it will not lock the OS partition, you cannot really do that. You can set up your users with a program like PROFILE RELOCATOR that would redirect stuff installed under the particular user or all users to a different partition or drive.

there will only be one user... just me. and most things i can select to install somewhere else but some stuff just automatically defaults to the primary partition. Do you know of a good bootable imaging program? id like to also take a system image as soon as i have it all set up in case anything ever happens i can just insert the disk and start back from square one.

I use Ghost 15 and Acronis True Image for my disk images. You can insert the boot disk that you have for either and then copy the image that you will have on some other drive (internal or external) back to the ssd OS partition.

Awesome thank you very much