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will this work? MBR to GPT

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would this plan work?

using windows 8 and acronis 2013 make image of system disk

reboot and run windows 8 install and format drive to GPT

run acronis 2013 recover cd and restore image to disk without removing GPT.....

I was reading that older version would not keep the drive GPT and would convert it to MBR

Was this limitation removed?

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I'm not sure your plan would work, as the information stored in the backup image is based on an MBR mode disk drive.
If you want to test this on your own, after creating a full disk backup of your current system, you would need to convert your disk to GPT before installing Windows 8. This will delete all the data on your disk. Install Windows 8 and test for proper bootability. (You need to have UEFI firmware enabled (not legacy BIOS) on your system and use Windows 8 64 bit edition for this to even be possible. If your system boots properly, make another full disk backup of the newly installed system for safe keeping. Then boot to your recovery disk and restore your original image to the drive (do not restore the entire disk), at first only restoring the OS partition overwriting the one on the GPT disk. Try to boot the system after the OS partition only restore first, if that boot fails, restore the System Reserved and OS partions, overwriting the ones on the GPT disk. Do not restore the MBR/boot track or the disk signature (you could possibly restore the disk signature later if needed). Reboot and see how it goes.
If it doesn't boot, try using the Windows 8 installation media to perform a Startup Repair to see if it can correct the boot problems.
If you can't get it to work, be sure to convert your disk back to MBR style before restoring your image. This step may not be necessary, but it would help to prevent restore issues.
I have not tried to do this yet. The methods I am suggesting would be the approach I would take if I were doing what you describe. I have a client that is upgrading to a 3TB drive as the OS drive in a system with UEFI firmware but has an MBR style disk installed currently. I would very much like to know of your results.