Backups VS Burnt Copies ?

You seem to have a good knowledge of what backups are from what you have said, so I don't think you have a difficulty with the terms backup and copies.

In fact there is no difference in the sense you are talking about. If you backup a music file, video file, photo, personal document, installation file, etc, then you are taking a copy and placing it elsewhere. That 'elsewhere' is somewhere safe so that, if you lose the originals stored on the hard drive of your computer, (usually the C drive), you can restore those by copying them back from the backup copies.

The 'elsewhere' is important. Backing up, (or copying), to another partition on the internal hard disk is not a backup. If that hard disk fails then you not only lose the partition where the Operating sits, but you lose those backups as well. Backing up to an external disk is OK, but that should not be your primary backup because that external hard disk can fail as well. The safest backup media is CD/DVD stored somewhere away from the computer. (If the fire that burns your house down also burns the CD's stored next to the computer then they were not backups).

Backing up the Operating System is more problematical. You can't just 'copy' all the files to some other media because that won't work. There are special utilities to backup the OS. Windows has it's own backup utility but people generally use something like Acronis True Image. These produce special backup files, but you cannot just copy those files back to the main hard drive to restore the OS. You would need the same utility you backed up with, (eg Acronis True Image), to restore the OS from those files. Otherwise they are just useless files.

Mark

Where your backup must be write protected. I haven't found a write protect switch on USB HARD DISKS yet so these are relegated to (nice) copies.

The CD/DVD media isn't so easy to alter so it qualifies as backup.

Does that help?

In closing, go ahead and make quick copies to other places since that's fast and will help you recover from simple mistakes but if and when a virus hits it will also get the USB drives.
Bob