I do have a 2nd PC, and I'm wondering if I remove my HDD and convert it into an external drive readable on the 2nd PC via USB if I can remove CTM from that HDD and avoid having to reformat and reinstall the years of applications on the drive. Any thoughts on this?
Which version did you install?
Without CTM running, with version 2.8 you can only get the baseline (before installing).
When version 2.9 you can only get the latest snapshot (current state).