Time Machine backups onto new hard drive

My hard drive recently failed and I had it replaced. I am trying without success to restore my data using the Time Machine external drive that backed up my old hard drive. When installing Snow Leopard, it wouldn't recognize my TM drive, so I just did a regular install and updated it to 10.6.6. When I click on the external drive in the sidebar it says there is a file in it called backups.backupdb, however it says there isn't any data in there. Disk utility shows the external drive has 400gb of data on it, which is correct, but I am unable to access it.
This link: http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/5.html describes how to pull data off of Time Machine, but it says both disks must have the same partition scheme - my external TM drive is APM and my comp is GUID. Is it possible to change my computer's partition scheme without causing problems in the future? Any other idea on how to pull data off of TM, even if it is manually doing it piece by piece?

Oh, that doesn't sound good. Have you tried doing this on the drive:
Repair the Hard Drive
Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder. After DU loads select your TM backup volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
Check the drive again to see if the Backups.backupd folder is still empty. If so then the next thing is to see if there's anything on the drive that's now invisible. The following instructions will enable the Finder to display invisible files:
Enable Finder to Show Invisible Files and Folders
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following command line then press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
To turn off the display of invisible files and folders enter or paste the following command line and press RETURN.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
Alternatively you can use one of the numerous third-party utilities such as TinkerTool or ShowHideInvisibleFiles - VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Now if all this fails and you find nothing in the user tips, then that means trying recovery software:
General File Recovery
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive.
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.

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    andrew70301 wrote:
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