Is copying the save directory enough to back up characters?

Hi all,

In the path where D2 is installed there is a directory called "save".
Is it enough to back this dir. up in the case of hard drive failure or
reinstall? I looked for some backup utilities, and the most recent I
could find seemed to only work on older versions (dated around 2004!).
When I tried to use it, my character names showed up but all of the
stats were zeros.

I recall that the original Diablo needed some registry settings to
actually save characters; does anyone know if that is still the case
with D2?

TIA,

BTW I am talking about single player charaters here, obviously