It is not only a hard disk crash, you either provide. Once a laptop out of the House is taken it is by accidental damage, loss or theft of endangered and while the hardware can be replaced, not necessarily the same can for the data on your hard drive.
Add to the list the worry is accidental deletion. Statistics here are hard to get, because nobody wants to admit, be so careless, but we admit it, we have all lost data in this way. The sad fact is that your valuable data for a variety of reasons, not nearly as sure as you probably expect and hope. Thats why you need to back up your files.