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#71
Your situation is complicated because you need to transfer Windows and Windows licenses as well as hard drives.
You need to make images and you need some where to store them temporarily before they are restored. An external drive is the most likely spot.
1: If you want to put the hard drive that comes with the new PC into some other PC (wife's PC I guess), you would first need to make an image of whatever operating system is now on the SSD. Save that image file temporarily.
2: Then again use imaging to make another image of the operating system that is on the new PC's hard drive.
3: Then put the SSD into the new PC and restore the image you made in step 2 to the SSD, wiping out what is now on the SSD.
4: Then put the new hard drive that came with the new PC into the older PC and restore the image you made in step 1 to that new hard drive, wiping out whatever was originally on the new hard drive.
If you do the above, the Windows license that is now on the SSD will end up on the new hard drive in the old machine. The old machine will have the same Windows it always had, just a different hard drive.
The new PC will have the new Windows license on the SSD.
How does that sound? Is that your intent?