Restoring from Time Machine after 1T hard drive replacement

I am a super computer novice. I picked up my computer yesterday after having the recalled Seagate hard drive replaced. I backed up my computer using Time Machine before I took it in on a Seagate "Backup Plus" portable hard drive.
Now, when I have tried to use the restore start up, the computer recognizes that my drive is connected, but says there are no files on that drive it can use to restore the system.
I can see that there are 50GB on the disk, and when I look in it, there are files called "Macintosh HD" so that makes me think that my stuff is in fact on my external drive. why can't my computer see it?
Do I need to get a FireWire cord to connect to my computer?  I'm using the USB 3.0 that came with the hard drive.
My computer had Mountain Lion when I backed it up. I think it is back to whatever OS it came with originally. Do I need to update to Mountain Lion?  If I do, how do I do so without having to pay for it again?  My app store is empty since my computer was wiped.
Thanks for the help, I really need it!

The first thing to do is upgrade back to ML, which you can easily do.  Just redownload ML from the app store with the same AppleID you used the previous time you purchased the ML upgrade.  Your purchase is tied to the AppleID you used when buying, so you can download it again (as many times as you wish) without payment as long as you use the same AppleID.
Once you have upgrade it to ML, then try the restore from the backup (which I gather was made when while running ML before).

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    Allamistakeo wrote:
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