Continue with same Time Machine backup history after restore?

[InfoTime]

Recently restored a machine from a Time Machine backup. I booted from the Leopard disc and picked a three-day old backup point and restored the entire thing to a new hard drive. Now when trying to backup to that Time Machine disk it fails telling me there's not enough space available (needs 247GB but only has 207GB available on a 500GB disk)

So, Time Machine can continue backing up to the same disk drive keeping the history of other backups, or does it HAVE to start over? The only thing that was changed about the machine was the hard drive.

 

[-tWv-]

In my experience with Time Machine, when it detects a new hard drive or even a clean install, it thinks that the machine is completely different and wants to make a completely new initial backup like it does when you first start using it. I haven't been able to get around this problem, and have always had to start over by deleting the previous folder of time machine backups, creating enough free space on the drive. I don't think there is a way to get around this, it is just the way time machine works (which should be changed in the future) but I would wait and see if someone else replies before starting over.