There are many ways to back-up the switch configuration. Some examples are:
copy run start
Most basic and as you know writes the current running config to startup so it will be preserved during reboot.
copy <run|start> [other filename]
Copy run or startup config to an alternate file name on the flash or if you have inserted a USB drive you can copy to it as well.
show run | no
This will pipe the output of show run to ’no-more’ which will do the same thing as ’term len 0’ without changing the default setting for the current terminal settings. Once you do this you can cut and paste this to a file and save it on an alternate device.
The same as #3 but redirect to a file using:
show run | no > [filename]
You can scp the config from the box to a server, this is a common way to export the config to a central location, generally I create an alias to make it easy something like:
alias backUp copy run scp:[username]@[ip address]/[directory]/[configuration file name]
You can also look at open source packages like Rancid
