Macbook Pro will not recognize my external hard drive

I just updated to a newer MacBook Pro.  I ran Time Machine on my old Macbook from a 2TB external USB hard drive.  When I hooked the hard drive to my new Mac, it wouldn't allow me to select it as the drive for Time Machine.  So I dismounted the hard drive and hooked it back to my old macbook to see if it still registered there (which it did).  Now when I try and hook the hard drive to my new macbook, it will not recognize it at all.  First question, why will it not recognize my new macbook, and second question, why does Time Machine not recognize the hard drive?  It has my old time machine files on it...hopefully I don't have to reformat it and lose all my backup??

My hard drive is now connected.  But Time Machine will not let me select the hard drive as my back up drive. This hard drive was used on another Macbook, so Time Machine doesn't seem to recognize the hard drive on the new one.  Do I need to reformat the hard drive? I hate to do that because I have the previous backups on there.

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