Thanks guys. I have not used Tech Tool Pro for years, but I remember that nice feature of them having the hidden e drive or something. I really love the new Mac feature command R, hidden recovery, it's so fast easy to test your Mac HD.

Are Time Machines backups of bootable backups of the OS? Reading online people say it's not.. but I remember it being offered recently from Migration tool (which I did not choose), which would make it seem then it's a bootable copy.

Anyway, trying to get my head around the SD not backing up the recovery drive.

So if my Mac HD fried, and I cloned back from a SD clone, the recovery drive is not there, fine. But could I then add the recovery drive to the OS, manually and stay with what I have or do I have wipe Mac HD clean to get it as a feature? i.e. putting back in all my apps manually one at a time..?? That is the confusing part.