How can I clone my Lion-pre-installed drive to a new smaller hard drive?

I got a new MBP with Lion installed (as detailed here: How can I install an SSD on my new Lion MBP w/out install disks?), and I want to clone the drive (including the Lion install partition) to my new SSD drive? (Note: I don't care about the OS or user files since this is a brand new machine).

Edit I have a solution, so mainly just created this question to share my result. However, I know others may have different ways to have done this, so please share

Solution 1:

Carbon Copy Cloner and no, there is no point in a DVD. Save the installer if you must. Redownload it from the store if you didn't save it, but most users never use the DVD and with recovery partition there no need for having a DVD lying around.

Beside, are you aware how long mother nature need to decompose a DVD. Add some ecological thinking.

With no sarcasm: Thank you Apple for dropping the pointless DVD.

Solution 2:

It didn't take long - there is now an official assistant to roll your own external recovery HD. You need a USB drive with 1Gb of space and a free download.

The Lion Recovery Disk Assistant and OS X Lion: About Lion Recovery Disk Assistant will walk you through making an external bootable Recovery HD.

As the cloning software I like won't handle the Recovery HD yet, I've gotten good results by installing Lion onto the smaller hard drive and letting it make the Recovery HD.

It's easy to migrate the apps and data in post install rather than do it all in one step.

Solution 3:

Starting with version 3.4.4 Beta 1 it is possible to clone the Recovery Partition with Carbon Copy Cloner, check

http://help.bombich.com/kb/troubleshooting/will-ccc-clone-the-recovery-hd-partition-on-lion

for more information.