Taking files you need/want, storing them elsewhere whilst you reformat (re-record/uninstall then reinstall) your hard drive software (OS).
imagine you got an inmense virus from a s**t page, you will need to format all you computer, that means lose all your data. now imagine you got lot of games, and that games cost you every point you have. At the rate of 50 point per day will take you lots of days if you dont have a backup, but if you got a backup you can reformat your computer, and you'll not have to re-download those games again that why is good to have a back-up
it means saving all the information you have on your computer onto an external harddisk, so that when your computer crashes, your data is still available~
A better way of explaining it is imagine you have all your schoolwork and projects on your computer, including exam coursework. You turn it off one night, and when you turn it back on again the next morning it wont boot because the hard disk failed overnight (for example, a head crash). If you don't have backups of your work then you are up shit creek. happened to me twice. Luckily it wasnt a head crash so I was able to recover data from the failed disk.
Storing pictures, drives, documents, whatever you want that is important to you onto a external Hard drve, CD, DVD, online back-up and more. It's important. When your computer is screwed, you can access files from your back-up storages so you won't be entirely screwed, data wise.
but it hurts much more to me when all my games go to the dump (i save my school work in a sd memory card)
so what happens when your HDD and your backup are corrupted at the same time? Story: I was backing up some stuff on my PC with a USB, there was a power surge, and when I rebooted my PC, it said there was a HDD failure, and when I tried to access my USB stick, all the data had been corrupted... that was a fun day...
What I mean is that he asked for the definition of the phrase "backing up". All you did was tell him what to back up.
Getting it on an external hard drive is cheaper than using Norton to back it up on their servers. Or just upload every single bit of data on your PC as a torrent (encrypted .zip file)
It doesn't necessarily have to be before reinstalling an operating system. Businesses back up their data off-site in case of a disaster. Computer users back up their important files in case their hard drive crashes.
