Circle with a slash displayed when attempting to boot to Recovery disk

Question

I have the following:OS X El Capitan 10.11.2iMac (24-inch, Early 2008)2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo4 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAMMy issue:I just updated this Mac from Lion to El Capitan. I&#x27;m now trying to clone my existing HDD to a new SSD in order to replace the HDD. So, I need to boot into Recovery mode to restore my SSD with the content from the HDD. When I attempt to boot to the Recovery disk using CMD+R, it almost immediately fails with a grey circle with a slash symbol (like this one... http://i.stack.imgur.com/y8ULs.jpg). When I try booting to Recovery using the the Option key, it gives me the choice of either my Macintosh HD or the 10.11.2 Recovery disk. I choose the Recovery disk, it thinks about it then goes to the circle with a slash symbol. So, is my Recovery disk screwed? Can it be repaired or reinstalled somehow? I do not have the original install disk for my OS and updated to El Capitan via the App Store. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Here&#x27;s some additional info...distil list shows a recovery disk:/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *320.1 GB   disk0   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            240.0 GB   disk0s2   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3   4:                  Apple_HFS Untitled                79.1 GB    disk0s4I tried diskutil cs list as I saw it somewhere that there could be an issue with the recovery being unintentionaly flagged due to a FileVault setting or something, but it returns that there are No CoreStorage volume groups found.I tried clearing my NVRAM using CMD+Option+P+R and it had no effect.Also, I found this related to the symbol I&#x27;m seeing...When you see a circle with a slash symbol instead of the Apple logo, it means your Mac couldn&#x27;t find a valid System Folder to start up from.If you&#x27;re using your Mac at a school or business, it might be trying to start from the wrong version of OS X. Contact your IT department for more help. If this is your personal Mac, try reinstalling OS X by using OS X Recovery.          Source: About the screens you see when your Mac starts up - Apple SupportUnfortunately, the solution provided is exactly my problem... I can&#x27;t boot to Recovery. Ugh. 😟 Hoping someone can provide some insight on how to fix this, as I have no idea.