Best way to go about adding a new, but smaller boot disk

Question

So, after fawning over the new MBP with Retina Display I've decided that I'm not willing (yet) to spend that kind of money on a new MBP.  Instead, I've decided to try to make my existing 15" Mid-2009 MBP peppier.  To that end, I've gone off and purchased a kit to convert the optical drive into a hard drive and also purchased a new 128GB SSD.  The existing internal HD is 500GB.  My plan is to have my OS on the 128GB SSD and keep my data files on the bigger but slower HD.  The devil of course is in the details.
A first question, but by no means the most important since I can experiment to find out, is if it makes better sense to put the SSD in the optical bay converter, or to swap it for the 500GB HD and put *that* in the converter.  I've seen some discussion that suggests that the latter is the better choice, but I'm certainly willing to read what folks have to say.
The second and far more important question, is how should I handle migrating the OS?
One option seems to be to use SuperDuper! which seems to be pretty well suited to the purpose.  It has a mode (sandbox - shared users) that will copy all by the user files to another drive and will even select it as the boot drive when it is done if you like.  This would move the OS and all the applications to the SSD while keeping my big honking home directory on the 500GB HD.
Another option would be to do a fresh install of Mountain Lion to the SSD and use the Migration Assistant to pull my settings in.  As I recall, I can choose exactly which bits I migrate in... it isn't clear to me that it is quite intended to be used for moving to a two drive setup though.  I'd be less sure this would result in what I'm after.
But then I started thinking about things like the Recovery HD partition and the EFI partition.  Both are hidden, even to Disk Utility. I don't really want to waste space on the SSD for either if I can keep them on the HD.  A fresh install of Mountain Lion on an SSD installed as an internal drive would presumably get both.
I'm currently leaning toward the SuperDuper! route, but I want to hear reasoned opinions.  Thoughts?

Answer 1

You will need to first prep the SSD.
Install a fresh copy of Mountain Lion on the SSD.
Boot from the SSD.
Open Users & Groups and click on the lock icon to authenticate.
Select your SSD user account. CTRL- or RIGHT-click and select Advanced Options from the context menu.
Click on the Choose button to the right of the field labeled, "Home directory:".
Navigate to your Home folder on the HDD, select and click on the Open button.
Click on the OK button and restart.
Drive Preparation for Lion/Mountain Lion
1.  Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
2. After DU loads select your SSD (entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area.  If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing.  SMART info will not be reported  on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
7. After formatting is done quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Reinstall Lion and click on the Continue button.
The Lion/Mountain Lion installer will create a Recovery HD on the SSD.