No, Paragon will not migrate the recovery partition. All it will migrate is the system reserved partition and the partition with the OS on it.
I found just using Macrium Reflect to clone my HDD to my new SSD worked best (Paragon and Samsung's Migration Tool were total fails). I didn't even have to realign the SSD or turn on trim afterwards. I did have to disable defrag.
The Paragon Migration tool does transfer the hidden 200MB system partition - has to, because that's where your bootmgr resides. But that is NOT the recovery partition which is usually appr. 10GB and which is not transferred to the SSD.
The recovery console will work but you cannot restore to factory conditions. For that I suggest you make an early image after the tranfer.
Yes, Macrium Reflect will migrate all partitions. Basically, you are not migrating; you are cloning. If the drive you are migrating to is smaller than the one you are migrating from, you probably wouldn't be able to do so. Also, I don't know if the recovery partition will work with the new drive so whs' advice to take an early image is spot on. Also, you will be better off using a dock for the drive you are cloning to than trying to use an external HDD. I'm not even certain you can use an external HDD for that.
Generally Macrium does a good job with different sized drives, as long as the data from the old drive is smaller than the new drive's capacity. If it is much smaller it makes an unallocated partition, or has twice for me.
I've imaged the recovery partition using Macrium to a new HDD and performed a factory restore without problems. But in my case (an old ACER desktop) the new HDD needed to be the same size as the old one. If you have say a 1TB HDD and put the recovery partition on say a 256 GB SSD I wouldn't expect it to work. I'd definitely try it first.
With Macrium an image restore using their drag and drop method should allow you to migrate to a smaller drive.
v5: How to restore a backup image (Restore, v5)
You are correct; the paid version does quite a bit more but, as you said, the free version is excellent and will meet the needs of most people. I personally prefer the paid version. I have four licenses (four didn't cost any more than the two I needed) that are lifetime for the current version of the paid version. That version will still be good after the new version comes out; it just won't get any more updates. I won't upgrade unless the new version has one or more features I could really benefit from.
Personal - Macrium Software
It is on my "list" to get the Macrioum 4 license PRO pack along with a few SSD's a 60" TV (I don't see as well as I used to but my Sony 57" PTV is 10 years old and still has a fantastic picture, I do know how good it is, repairing them was what I did) 3 of the same 16:10 monitors to replace the 3 on my desk that have nothing wrong with them.....and so on. I am sure all us Geeks have the same kind of list.
Quote
I believe the paid version does all kinds of extra stuff but the free version is excellent. I have been using it for several years. Someone on The Register recommended it so I downloaded it. Never used anything else since. I think they have put Norton Ghost out of business.