If you are putting the entire system onto the SSD, I hope the SSD is as big or bigger (In GB) than your original hard drive. Otherwise it will mean stopping a partition from being copied over.
I would certainly go for making a clone from your original drive onto the new SSD drive, as firstly making a current image onto an external drive, then copying the image onto the new SSD is going to take twice the time.
Once you have the system cloned or otherwise copied onto the SSD you will be amazed at the speed of boot up time, the time required for applications to open and be ready to use and more.
I went down that road nearly twelve months since and the speed improvement is well worth the cost of the drive, though mine is a 512GB drive from Crucial.
I have just recently within the last few days bought another one to use as the backup clone, rather than relying on the older mechanical hard drives.
Incidentally, you are correct, you should disable the Windows automatic defragmenter. Defragmenting isn't really necessary and over a long period of time a continuously running auto defrag can cause premature failure.
Nothing else needs any tweeks in Windows 7 that I am aware of

Last edited by Cornet Nev; 06/27/15 08:21 AM.