How do I create a bootable drive from and existing OS intallation

“not of type Apple_HFS or Apple_UFS” error means the target drive isn’t formatted in a way macOS can clone to. Yosemite requires the destination drive to be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with a GUID Partition Map, not APFS or ExFAT.

Here’s what you can do, connect your new SSD, open Disk Utility, select the SSD < click Erase < choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and GUID Partition Map.

Once done, try cloning again using Disk Utility < Restore, or use a third-party tool, that’ll give you a fully bootable clone of your existing OS without hitting those validation errors.

But please make sure to create a backup of your data.

First, the (new) external drive, regardless of whether it's an HDD or SSD, would need to be formatted ahead of time as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

Second, use CarbonCopyCloner to clone your existing drive to the (new) external drive. For a Yosemite-based system you would need CarbonCopyCloner Version 5

A few extra notes ...

• Given the age of your MBPro (probably a Core2Duo model) you are probably better off getting a replacement HDD instead of an SSD. In that era the internal HDDs were only SATA3 and there is a possibility it would not work with a modern SSD.
• With only USB 2.0 and FW400/800 ports you will be severely limited by access speed to an external drive during the cloning process. Plan on it taking awhile.
• Older software sometimes used what was called a hardware "hash code" to authorize the app's license; there is a chance that some of 3rd-party software you have may or may not work on the cloned drive. YMMV.

If your Hard Drive is making those noises, then you may not be able to use CCC to clone the boot drive depending on the extent of the drive failure. Keep in mind trying to copy the failing HD's contents will likely make the drive failure even worse since macOS really doesn't handle the I/O errors of failing drives very well. I know CCC will alert you to the errors if they interfere & provide you an option to skip those items automatically (best do it as CCC will log the items that could not be transferred). CCC is an excellent app when the Hard Drive is healthy. There is no good way to clone a failing HD using macOS...CCC may work if the failure is mild & limited to a very small section of the HD.

If you want to create a bootable macOS USB installer, then you need to follow the instructions in the following Apple article:

Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

IIRC, if you have a Time Machine backup, then you should be able to use the TM backup to restore the entire system (OS & data) to an external drive which will be bootable.....since you are using Yosemite.

@MartinR is correct that some proprietary apps will require you to reauthorize them which will require the original license codes. Some of these companies have turned off the relevant online authentication servers for older app versions so it may no longer be possible to reinstall & use some of these apps (MS Office is one example, Adobe may be another).

<< I was planning on using disk utility to clone the drive to a new empty drive. That is by designating the new drive

as the destination or target drive and the internal drive as the source drive. >>

Disk Utility has no functions that can reliably clone a running MacOS to a new drive in a way that will be bootable.

By far the most reliable way to proceed is the current standard way: to install a NEW instance of MacOS from fundamental sources on the destination drive first.

Then migrate your data either form the original drive or a backup of the original drive.