Trying to recover a backup made using the OS7 backup utility

You'll probably have to dig up an old copy of Norton Utilities. Very likely it's done in some sort of proprietary formatting.

Is there any way to run an old copy of the software on today's hardware?

No.

No Intel-processor Mac can run Classic, which is a modified install of OS 9 used as a program to allow the use of some OS 9 and earlier software on a machine running OS X.

You will probably need to do two things -

• Acquire, or acquire the use of, an earlier machine, such as a G4 running OS 9 or OS X 10.4 or earlier and which has Classic installed.

• Acquire a copy of an OS 9 version of Norton Utilities which includes the File Saver module. With luck that will be able to open the older archives.

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Alternatively, you might see if there is an Apple User Group near you - most large cities and universities have them. One of their memebers may have an older, running Mac which can handle the old Norton File Saver program which they will let you use to extract those files.

Apple - User Groups

No Intel-processor Mac can run Classic,

Well...

http://sheepshaver.cebix.net/

http://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7141&sid=40d97ff6d3571109ddb10c fd582ba8b5

If you're up for a challenge.

Challange, indeed!

Those who've tried Sheepshaver and have reported their results in these forums don't always report success. I've never tried it - but then, one of the reasons I still have an OS 9-bootable machine is so I can boot it in OS 9 and run the old stuff.

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This may sound picky, but I do not mean it to be so... technically, Classic is not run in Sheepshaver; OS 9 is.

one of the reasons I still have an OS 9-bootable machine is so I can boot it in OS 9 and run the old stuff.

One of the things I do before I abandon any major OS version is to ensure all my files can be opened on the new platform, even if not by the same software package. I've also taken to saving a copy of things in as basic a form possible to ensure some sort of longevity. For example, I have documents I wrote 20 years ago in Wordperfect. I actually can still run WP, but probably the next computer upgrade won't allow it. I save those documents in plain ascii text format too. 99% of the effort in those documents is in the writing, 1% in the formatting. In the remote (but it has happened in the past!) chance I need them again in 10 years I'll be able to reconstruct them easily. Graphs are a bit more tricky, but I can save spreadsheet data as tab delimited text (and frankly, Excel seems to be in for the long run), and an image of the graph as .jpg (so many things make .jpg these days I doubt we won't be able to open it using something down the road).

I know what you mean by Classic definition, but since the OP's intent is to get something pre-OSX running I wasn't being particular on that point. It's all emulation.🙂

I would also if you don't have a working older Mac, get one to help in the transition*:

http://www.macmaps.com/usedrefurbished.html

Some of the best used Macs to get are the PowerMac G3 desktop (beige). You can add PCI cards to it that support USB, Firewire), and it comes with a floppy drive able to read older Mac floppies, and it can have up to 10.2.8 installed on it without a problem. That then can be networked with a newer Mac over TCP/IP.

You may need to be careful. The "backup tool" from the time made by Norton that came with Norton Utilities v2 was Norton Backup - an incredibly awesome piece of software for System 7 and OS8, but by OS9 it was showing it's age. I'm not sure if Norton FileSaver (any version can restore these backups.

How big a backup file are you talking about ? Someone may offer to unpack the files for you if they're not of a personal nature. Maybe here or at the Macintosh Garden forums.