Switching from PC to Mac

After 26 years as a PC guy I finally switched to a MacBook Pro 15". I have 1,000 questions, but I'll start with one....I installed a Hybrid SSD and now have the stock drive as an external for back ups. I have years of business PC software and data and after trying several Mac friendly replacements for the software, have decided to partition the external and load PC stuff on part of it. Questions....After I partition the external how can I carbon copy the PC just to the one side of the partition...or do I have to do a new install of windows on the partition and then transfer software and data? Great forum and I look forward to helping out here after I learn something!

 

Yeah..not real clear because I don't know what I'm doing. I will partition the external drive so that I can have Windows HP on one side of the partition and Mac OS X Lion on the other...can I do that? If I can do that will I be able to boot to the Windows side? If so will the drive connect to my PC and could I then carbon copy my PC to the Windows side? I don't wan't to use boot camp or a VM program on my internal SSD if at all possible....hope this is clearer...like I said I've never done this before and don't have any friends with Macs. The closest Apple store is 160 miles away...hope you can help. Thx

 

Thanks....I've thought this through better and I'll do a Boot Camp partition on the external then a clean Windows install on the appropriate side.....I will then manually install all of the Windows based software and transfer data via a thumb drive.....thanks for the quick responses!!!