You have a point about the recovery drive. That's one reason why I switched from SD to CCC as my cloning app of choice.
Regarding the Recovery Drive, if one does not have the file "Install OS X "whatever OS"" contained within the SD backup, then yes, the Recovery Drive will not be there upon a "complete" SD restore. But, I have the file "Install OS X El Capitan" on both of my SD backups/clones (for each of my machines), and hence if I do a complete SD recovery, I can easily re-create the Recovery HD partition. As jchuzi so correctly states, that is the fastest way to do a restore, and be back in business quickly.
The other thing I can do, especially with having that file on the SD backup, is that after I boot my Mac to that SD clone, use Disk Utility there to Erase and Format the internal SSD on my Mac, then run the "Install OS X El Capitan" installer to get a fresh, "virgin" El Capitan OS, re-boot my machine from the internal SSD, and use Migration Assistant to "migrate"/copy all the needed "stuff" from the SD clone. Of course that method also re-creates the Recovery HD partition (which I really don't need, given that I have TechToo, Pro and the file "Install OS X El Capitan").
The other, more important, was that an El Cap clone made with SD wasn't bootable, although it was supposed to be (and Dave Nanian, the tech support guy, couldn't solve it either). CCC has worked flawlessly for me.
That is false! After I read that, I quit Chrome, went to System Preferences, selected my SD clone/backup I created last week to restart my Mac MIni. and it successfully restarted from that SD backup/clone. It was slow (via a Firewire 800 connection to an external Seagate 7200 rpm drive), but it worked (I have done this previously also). And in fact, I verified that it worked after OS 10.11.1 was released (see below why I waited until OS 10.11., instead of first going with OS 10.11). So, I am unclear where this false stuff is coming from.
When El Capitan first came out, SD was made compatible with it, and in fact, it is one of my required products that need to be compatible before I upgrade to a new OS (the others are Office 2011, Onyx, 1Password, and TechTool Pro; in fact, I actually upgraded from OS 10.10.5 to OS 10.11.1, as 1) TechTool Pro and Onyx were not initially compatible with OS 10.11, and 2) a beta for OS 10.11.1 first appeared in August 2015, almost a full 2 months before OS 10.11).
I am still planning on purchasing a 512 gig SSD to place inside an external case, and I will use that for backups. But, as I had previously posted, I still can't find an inexpensive, slim external case that has a Firewire 800 interface. For now though, my two external 7200 RPM drives I have (with Seagate mechanisms) are good enough (for my mid 2013 Mac Book Air, I have a Thunderbolt-to-Firewire 800 connector/adapter, which works real well).
