Cloning startup HFS+ disk to APFS formatted disk possible?

[Europe calling]

Hi,

My old MacBook Pro from 2011 died last week. Internals are fine, but GPU died (white screen thing)
I managed to get a used MacBook Pro from 2015, and want to replace the empty system with the startup disk (OS Capitan) with all my stuff from my previous Mac.
Drives however are not physically interchangeable anymore since my old startup disk (HFS+ formatted) is a 2,5" SSD that doesn't fit into my 2015 machine.
So I hooked that SSD up to an external enclosure and connected it to my new Mac.
I thought I could clone it with CCC to a new internal (AFPS volume) I created in Disk Utility, but then CCC gives an error telling me the disk needs to be HFS extended formatted to clone system folders and make that volume bootable.
How can I get this done in the best possible way?
I have an internal APFS formatted 1TB SSD in my new Mac that now runs Mojave. Is it a good idea to create an HFS+ partition in the same SSD or are there better ways?

 

[BrianBaughn]

I suspect this page would contain your solution as it depends on many factors.

 

[Europe calling]

I suspect this page would contain your solution as it depends on many factors.

I read that page but it does not give me an answer to if I can make a bootable clone from an external HFS+ formatted SSD to my internal APFS formatted SSD. I am guessing that because the system on the external volume to be cloned is pre-APFS (El Capitan 10.11.6) it gives this error
So I'm hoping someone can point me to a solution.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Right. You can't clone El Capitan to an APFS drive since they're not compatible. It's an Apple thing…not CCC.

The easiest solution would be to start over with erasing and formatting the new MBP's SSD as HFS+.

Can you startup from the old, attached drive?

 

[Europe calling]

Right. You can't clone El Capitan to an APFS drive since they're not compatible. It's an Apple thing…not CCC.

The easiest solution would be to start over with erasing and formatting the new MBP's SSD as HFS+.

Can you startup from the old, attached drive?

Yes I can

 

[BrianBaughn]

Yes I can

That's the approach I'd take. Start from the external drive, do the erase/format of the internal to HFS+ from there and then clone. If CCC asks if you want to create a recovery partition on the internal have it do so.