I'm planning on putting together my new system on Saturday-Sunday. My understanding is that Windows 10 somehow ties its activation into your system, somehow. Being constrained by finances, I have not purchased new storage drives to put into this system.

The original plan was to transfer my current drives, as-is, after loading drivers for the new system hardware on to my Win 10 drive, so that when I get everything assembled and connected, all I have to do is start Windows, logon, install drivers and reboot.

My question is thus: Is this possible to do without wrecking my activated status? I know the best way to install Windows 10 is to upgrade from 7/8, THEN reinstall on top of that using preferred media. Problem being I do not currently own a copy of Win 7, it came with my current system, so I could not do a 'proper' clean install.

EDIT: Everything with the setup went smoothly. CPU, mobo, drives, everything went in fine. Windows booted up, reminded me to activate. I clicked 'activate' and it took about five minutes of thinking, and a huge network spike. Then I was all good.