Toshiba Laptop Hard Drive to SSD migration

Having messed this up once or twice in previous versions, I would like to get input on the proper way to do a hd to ssd migration. Source is a Toshiba laptop hard drive 750gb with a recovery partition for Windows 8.0 and the computer was upgraded to 8.1 with all the latest updates. Destination is either a 500 gb or a 1tb ssd. There is little else but some bloatware on the original hd (much less than 500gb). What I would like to accomplish is getting the recovery disk utility to work and windows to boot properly on the ssd. So, I make Acronis bootable disks, set my bios to boot from cd, power down and install ssd in laptop where 500gb drive is now, put 500gb in a usb 3.0 usb external drive, boot into cd, and then what about resizing? It would seem this was how I got into trouble on one where the recovery disk utility from Toshiba could not find the files it needed in a hidden partition(I think). So do I clone automatic, or keep everything the same size(possibly shrinking the c drive partition for a 500gb ssd? If I keep the same size, can I expand the c drive partition in windows for the 1 tb ssd?

If I don't care about going back to initial 8.0 and recovery disks on ssd, what would I need to do to reinstall 8.1?