>>>>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 ;)
>>
>>Thank you for the explanation about the RECOVERY partition. I have made so many changes that definitely I won't need it.
>>The Apricorn has good reviews on Amazon, as far as being able to close the drive. I hope it will give me good options to partition the new drive into C:, D:, E: of different sizes I have on my current drive (since I will have a bigger hard drive); and then copy the data from old C: to new C, old D: to new D:, and so on.
>>
>>One thing I notices on my current drive (looking at the Disk Management) is Healthy (OEM Partition) that has no letter drive assigned. (attached is the image). Do you think I need to do anything "special" about this?
>
>You do need that unnamed "OEM partition" (boot options etc). Cloning software will make sure it's installed properly on the new drive.
>
>You will definitely want to run the cloning option in "manual" mode, if only to ensure you don't clone the Recovery partition. In that mode you should have the option to resize any/all partitions that you choose to clone. The only real limitations are:
>
>- the destination partition can't be smaller than the actual amount of space in use on the source partition
>- there are other restrictions on the OS partition. With Windows it typically contains file(s) that can't be moved relative to the start of the partition, which restricts partition minimum size even if only a small % of the partition is in use
>
>If you're thinking of making all of your partitions bigger, that shouldn't be an issue.
>
>Speaking of the OS partition, as you probably know, no matter how hard you try to get software to install on another partition, it still wants to write a bunch of stuff to C:. So make sure you leave plenty of free space on that partition.

I will give C: 500 GB and split the rest between D: and E:. Right now the C: is about 260 GB so I will have plenty storage for the future software.
Thank you very much for your suggestions. While tomorrow some people will be watching this "unimportant event" :), I will be doing something very important :)