Need assistance with VAMT/Preserving Windows 7 Activation when Reinstalling Windows (MAK) - Urgent

Question

Hello,
My current HDD (500GB SATA 3 Toshiba HDD) is failing, and displaying a warning. I bought a new WD 750 GB HDD to replace it making sure it is compatible with SATA 3.
Problem: Reinstalling Windows 7 Professional and Office 2010 Professional Plus and activating both of them.
Activation/Products Affected:
They are "Retail" versions (MAK) but Academic so the activation limit is between 2 and 5. (Yes, they are only installed on One Computer, are Genuine and are compliant....).
Background: I am a college student, taking IT related courses and we have to install a lot of resource intensive software. I usually reinstall Windows every 4-6 months to "Start Fresh"
which I notice improved performance and only install necessary software. This is using up the MAK activations as is to be expected.
Goal: I would like to use VAMT 2.0 (or ideally 3.0 -but I have zero knowledge of SQL). I also do not have a server, just 2 or 3 Standard Laptops (Windows 8.1, Windows XP Home, and this Windows
7 PC).
I already watched the below video on VAMT 2.0 before posting:
http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/using-vamt-2-0/10tkzhtlq
Can I use proxy activation in this case to "preserve the Activations by using VAMT to store the Installation and Confirmation ID's to avoid having frequent activation problems? If so, can someone please help me?
I tried to set the WMI Windows Firewall Rules to Allow for Public, Home and Work on both PC's but was unable to activate in a previous attempt a few months ago.
Any help is more than appreciated. I am backing up all of my files and have to get this completed before college courses resume (in 3 days).
Thank you in advance, and sorry for the long post!

Answer 1

If you do a full image of the current 500GB HDD and then restore it to the 750GB HDD you will preserve the Windows Activation.  This will work with any backup that does a full image of the HDD including Windows 7 Backup.
Windows 7 Backup will only restore an exact duplicate of the original 500GB HDD retaining the same partition scheme and sizes which can be expanded later.  Most third party backup programs will restore to a larger HDD and expand the current partitions. 
Some give you the option to control the size of the expanded individual partitions.
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