Whatever works for you is fine. Some prefer other methods for making clones. Each method has its good and bad sides.
I've used disk utility a lot over the years. It works great for disk images. But I personally wouldn't choose it for cloning drives hard drives. It may accomplish the task. But there are better tools for the job (though you are free to have a different opinion).
As for the recovery partition, as stated, it serves as convenient access to numerous settings and troubleshooting options.
One common use is to enable and disable SIP. Which some of us have had to do on occasion (at least temporarily) to enable certain programs or utilities to install/operate.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/disable-sip.1902305/
You may prefer other methods. But for many, the recovery partition is very useful.
I would never suggest that a user just randomly abandon the partition, unless they were fully aware of anything they'd lose by not having it. And/or had alternative means of booting / troubleshooting their system already in place.
As setting up a RAID will prevent OP from retaining the recovery partition on his primary drive, having the recovery bootable on another location may be useful at some point.
And, another thing to keep in mind, is that not all Mac Pros are able to boot from USB drives (for example, mine). So considering that other users read these forums, even if the particular user's system can boot from USB, a clear warning should be issued with a reply that others might try performing on systems which lack that ability.
The idea is to minimize future readers from posting, saying they did as the suggestions said to do, and are now left with a paper weight. At that point, we are left saying, oh you shouldn't have used this technique on that model.
I tend to try and stay with advice that will always work, and if it is only to be applied to specific models, then I make that note.