Yeah, when I upgraded my wife's MB Pro to an SSHD last month, I used the Recovery Partition to access Disk Utility and then Restore the contents of her hard drive onto the SSHD as a bootable clone......not quite as simple as I would have liked, but effective. FWIW, the clone on the SSHD included a recovery partition....
As far as validating your comments, I'm not here for that.....your comments stand on their own. Your processes as you've described them are obviously functional to your needs and have worked for a good while.....doesn't necessarily make them the ONLY way to get the job done and doesn't necessarily make them right or wrong if someone else has a different solution.
Glad to see you here.
(edited to add info on the clone's Recovery Partition...
Last edited by MacManiac; 02/26/16 06:32 PM.
