Some how this is weird to me... isn't replication keeping a copy of your files somewhere else? And isn't that the very definition of "backup" ??
I guess you could say that, but replication alone would mean only having 1 copy and that copy would contain the same data that your original set of data contained depending on when the replication occurred. So if you happened to delete a file 3 days ago and just realized it today then you're SOL if replication had already occurred.