Can I Network My Previously Wired Time Machine Disk And Keep My Old Data?

[polycat33]

I just got an Airport Extreme, and was attempting to set up the external hard drive I use as my Time Machine backup as a network drive. Time Machine will see it, but won't recognize that it's the same disk I've been using with it for the past couple years. I read that the initial backup has to be made over the network or Time Machine won't recognize it due to the different mount point, but I'm wondering if there's any way around this?