I have been using Bitcoin-qt to mine bitcoin. I am a little worried about losing my coins on my computer, so I have made a backup of my wallet.dat file and put it somewhere safe.
Is this the right way to keep my coins safe from my computer crashing? Am I completely on the wrong track? What else might I need? I haven't encrypted my wallet.
Yes, but having the wallet.dat file is only enough to recover the lost bitcoins if it hasn't been compromised in the meantime (that's why it's a good idea to encrypt your wallet). There have been at least 2 other questions in the last week or two where a user tried to recover an old wallet and found it had been emptied.
If you do encrypt your wallet (and you should, to protect against malware stealing it), then you'll also need your passphrase for the wallet when you want to restore it and reopen it.
Yes, your wallet.dat is enough and nothing more care about or copy!.
Copy the file somewhere and if you want to import this file you can easily just stop bitcoind and then move your wallet.dat file to bitcoin directory then run bitcoin process again.
if you have encrypted your wallet make sure that you know the encrypting phrase.
