>Hi,
>
>I am preparing to clone my existing 500 GB drive to a new 1 TB SDD drive. I am going to use the Apricorn SATA Wire EZ Gig with the cable. I already have both the new drive and the Apricorn kit.
>My computer has the following drives:
>C: - OS and programs
>D: - DATA
>E: - DATA
>F:
>The F: drive is called RECOVERY (and it is set to 15.1 GB, 7.75 GB free).
>
>Do I need to create an F: RECOVERY drive of similar size on the new SSD drive? And if yes, would 15 GB be enough or I should set more space for it?

Historically the Dell Recovery partition has been for restoring the computer to its original factory condition. For my purposes that's useless, as everything installed since the computer was new gets blown away.

If you have image backup(s) and boot media from which you can boot and then restore from an image, that's a better backup solution. Windows 7 Backup and Restore has an image backup option which also includes the ability to create a recovery (boot) CD.

With good image and file backups in place that Recovery partition is not necessary.

Note that there may be a hard-coded boot menu option in your computer's BIOS offering to restore to the factory state from the Recovery partition. If you don't include that partition during your cloning process that option will no longer work. Personally, that's something I could live with ;)