There is no need to do that, either the switch of order or increase in partition size. It also increased the size of the MSR partition from 16MB to 120MB. After the restore Acronis switched the order to MSR, EFI System, Windows, Recovery. My original partition order was the EFI System, MSR, Windows, and then Windows Recovery. Question 1 and 3 in my original post are known issues with Acronis backing one disk and restoring to a different disk with UEFI/GPT based partitions. I think that they could save everyone, their customers and themselves, some time if they didn't make unnecessary changes to the partitions after restore. Trust me, there used to be a time when I, too, was puzzled by it, until somewhere on the Acronis forum I came across a post from one of their staff members explaining they find the integrity of the actual data stored on the partitions within the image a whole lot more important than partition changes, when these partition changes do not stop Windows from working like normal.This was my first time using Acronis to copy a disk and reimage into onto another. Like I said in my first reply, Acronis knows how to keep partitions working like normal in all components of Windows, even if what it does seems 'odd'.

Acronis partition recovery