I thought you were pretty clear in your first post and I think you have as good a plan as you can have. The only flaw is the image will only run on that same PC and only if that PC never needs a new MoBo and processor. It's a good plan because this is at least feasible being Mobo's and what not can last a long time. It is the hard drive that is most likely to fail first. 
I will do what you have done as well but I will do this with Windows 8.1 as W10 to me is the heart of all recent issues with Sonar. 
 

Cactus Music
I thought you were pretty clear in your first post and I think you have as good a plan as you can have. The only flaw is the image will only run on that same PC and only if that PC never needs a new MoBo and processor. It's a good plan because this is at least feasible being Mobo's and what not can last a long time. It is the hard drive that is most likely to fail first. 
I will do what you have done as well but I will do this with Windows 8.1 as W10 to me is the heart of all recent issues with Sonar. 
 

That's what I was thinking. At first I thought I might could just save the offline activation files, but that didn't work at all on a reinstall. So if I change hard drives or PC's I'm pretty much out of luck using Sonar Plat in the future... 
 
But as it stands now, at least with what I got it will work, and I have the image backup with just Sonar/Music software only and Windows 10 with all activated if I need to start over. I'm hoping my PC will work for a few more years at the very least, I got it around this time year before last. Time will tell I guess. Hopefully Cakewalk will issue some type of unlock and keep in mind that a few of the plugins might need authorization also. We shall see....