Replaced hard drive, need to re-link Time Machine

Please, before you start typing any response, read my entire post.
I recently upgraded my internal HDD. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the old drive to the new one, and when I booted up my computer after physically installing it, it worked fine. However, when I plugged in my Time Machine backup, it started to prepare to backup the entire drive, as if I had never backed up before.
I stopped the back up in progress, and started to look for a way to re-link my Time Machine backup drive.
After pouring through post after post, I decided I do NOT want to open Terminal and go through a thousand meticulous steps to change my drive's UUID, or rather change the UUID that Time Machine looks for.
I would rather reboot, wipe my new drive again, and restore from my Time Machine backup, as it seems to be the easiest way to re-link without getting a headache.
However, do I need to delete the backup that I stopped, before doing anything else? I'm going to assume so? Otherwise I'm afraid Time Machine will try to complete it, and start backing up the entire contents of the drive all over again--my original problem that I'm trying to avoid.
Your advice?
swap clone copy replace inProgress delete format erase

Hat7 wrote:
After pouring through post after post, I decided I do NOT want to open Terminal and go through a thousand meticulous steps to change my drive's UUID, or rather change the UUID that Time Machine looks for.
Those rarely work anyway.
I would rather reboot, wipe my new drive again, and restore from my Time Machine backup, as it seems to be the easiest way to re-link without getting a headache.
That won't help, either. It doesn't matter how you get the data onto the drive, it's a new drive, with a new UUID (and it will get another new one if you do the restore). Time Machine will do a new, full backup of it. You cannot prevent that.
How large is your Time Machine drive, compared to the size of the data it's backing-up?
Time Machine will start deleting old backups, trying to make room for the new one. If the TM drive is less than about 2.2 times the size of the data, the backup will fail for lack of space after deleting all but the most recent backup.
If it's much larger, then fewer old backups will have to be deleted. Unfortunately, it's impossible to predict how much space each will gain.
So, if your drive is well over 2.2 times the size, just let it do the full backup.
If not, either erase the drive and let it start fresh, or start over on a different (probably larger) drive.

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