Backing up my bitcoin wallet - is wallet.dat all I care about? I know that there are many duplicates of this but I'm hoping that the way in which I word this explains and helps not just me, but others as well.

In any of the coin wallet  bitcoin and the alt coins, when I run a backup I see a wallet.dat file being created.


Does this wallet contain all the necessary information like private keys etc... in order to say encrypt this file and store it on a google drive , dropbox etc..  ?
If my hard drive takes a dive etc.. , CAN I simply take that wallet.dat file , and on another computer decrypt it and restore my information based on my coin currency?
If I do the encryption within the wallet, is the wallet.dat called something else?


I understand the exchanges , buying, trading , selling, mining...  I'm just not versed in the backup with my information... private keys etc...    thanks in advance.
Yes.
Yes.
No. Note that that the software's encryption encrypts only the private keys, not transaction and address book information, so to protect your privacy you may want to add encrypting the file itself.