Can y'all bear with me for a moment while I ask another dumb-ass computer question?→[More:]I bother you people because I know you won't laugh at me (to my -virtual- face!) and because you're so patient and all. Let us all recall that I don't know shit about computers.

OK so I asked a while back about buying an external hard drive, and picked up a Maxtor one touch, on the advice of Triode (which if I read correctly translated to: even 3 year olds could operate this set up so you should be ok). So cool. I got it and installed it all and back up my stuff every couple of days. (I also copy all of my files into our work server).

My question is: what is actually happening with the back up (in simple terms?) And if my lappy dies one day... what do I actually do? I've been reading the maxtor website, and...I kind of don't understand it. Also...is there any way I know it's backing up correctly? It feels kind of like magic to me. How do I check?

And as thank yous, it's my round. For a while.