I recently had my poor MacBook pro die on me. It took a few tumbles in the shoddy bag that I got from work, as well as got "crushed" on the CDRom. I can see why they redesigned the entire line.
In any case, I had over a years worth of time machine backups that I really did not want to lose. After googleing, I found
10.5: Repair Time Machine after logic board changes, which I though was going to solve all of my issues. Suffice it to say, it did not. It had the general principal correct, but didn't actually solve the issue. So, here is my guide that will ensure you get your backups back.
First, start as he did and get your mac address. Since you will be doing almost everything in the console, you should just use:
ipconfig | grep -A 1 en0
Next, change directory to the time machine disk. This should be
/Volumes/ĞDISKNAMEğ, where DISKNAME is the disk name. You will find the .001122334455 file of your old machine's mac, as well as your new machine. If you backup multiple macs to the same time machine drive, then you will find several of these files. Your next step is to disable filesystem ACL's on the time machine disk.
sudo fsaclctl -p /Volumes/Time Machine -d
Then you will need to find the old mac address, then write the new mac address (from above).
sudo xattr -p com.apple.backupd.BackupMachineAddress MyMac
sudo xattr -w com.apple.backupd.BackupMachineAddress MyMac
You will need to move the old hidden file to the new mac address name. The filename is the mac without the colons, and preceded by a decimal (standard unix hidden file).
cd ..
mv .001122334455 .998877665544
Lastly, enable filesystem ACL's again.
sudo fsaclctl -p /Volumes/Time Machine -e
Now "Safe" eject the drive (right click and eject), then reinsert it.
Now, if you are a "defaults only" user, this will work. However, I am not a defaults only user.
Personally, I found that deleting the hidden file, then retargeting time machine with "Change Disk" seemed to work a little better. But, it wasn't actually finding my data. Everything was locked, and it only had a folder called "MacBurger" with all of my data in it, which was a pain since I couldn't get to them with iCal/Address book. As it turns out, you should rename your new hard drive to the name of the old hard drive to get a proper backup. Unplug it and plug it back in, everything will work.