The point of taking a copy of the repo is that you don't have to use git itself to get back to a known state, which is important when it's a tool that you're ex

The point of taking a copy of the repo is that you don't have to use git itself to get back to a known state, which is important when it's a tool that you're experimenting with and you're not sure on its use. There's also a psychological element to it. If you can verify for yourself that the repo can't possibly contain anything that would mess you up after an earlier mistake, it's much easier to do things than if you have to worry about using the wrong branch name when you don't know how to delete branches, for example.