Windows 7: Restoring System Image Without Reformatting

I made a system image of my hard-drive and then converted the drive to GPT from MBR. When I went to restore my image of windows, it wants to reformat the hard-drive. Won't this convert it back to MBR?

Is it impossible to restore a Windows image from an MBR drive onto a GPT drive?

I understand that I can buy another hard-drive for my GPT needs, but I'd like to exhaust my other options first.

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If you objective is simply to restore the data then that will be possible.

Will restoring the data enable me to use programs I had installed without having to reinstall each one? Will the registry be restored?

No.
No.

Alright, thanks for the info. I guess this means I need to buy a second hard-drive.

3rd party programs can do it.

Not windows system image as far as I know.

You could restore your windows system image as mbr style, then use a 3rd party program to non destructively convert.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

Update: As you guessed, I don't think that will work for me because the system image has windows on it. Evidently the motherboard's firmware interface is different between MBR and GPT. I tried AOMEI and the limitation was described in their help section. I assume this is the problem because when I follow the instructions and right click the drive, no option to convert is listed.

fluby
Convert basic disk to dynamic disk.