You can get them almost anywhere, office max, wallmart, Biglots. The flash drive or thumb drive will indicate how much space it has usually written on it. You can put as much on it until it's full, then you get a pop up saying drive is full.

each thumb flash drive will say what it holds for example it might hold 4 gig or 8 gig or less or more. It depends on what type files you will be storing, picture and video files are very large so will take up much more room than just text or document files.
go to the folder of the files you want to backup to the thumb drive and right click on it and choose properties it will tell you exactly how much is contained in that folder so you would know you need a flash drive that is big enough to hold that much at least.
I think 4 gig is a nice size and they are fairly inexpensive. I buy 4 gig Kingston drives at Big Lots all the time for $12. You can buy them at walmart, best buy, or any stores that sell electronics and computer stuff.
I stick with the name brand ones like Kingston, San disk, corsair etc. Here is the link to some over at buy.com
Results Within Our Stores

general guide for using one
Overview of How to use a USB Flash Drive

If you are going to buy one... then buy two. They are not infallible, are subject to breakage, loss, static, infection and more.
I've lost count of the folks who have saved their treasured *whatever* on one of these, only to lose it all.

Be sure to remove the drives "safely" using the Windows utility.

The number one result of failure to do so is the work product will become a read-only and the occupied space on the drive cannot be reclaimed.

DA

DA do you mean to click on the "eject" when removing the drive?
That is what I do

You can get all sizes of USB flash drives, I use a 2GiG which will hold a lot!!
I simply insert flash into usb port, right click on file, then send to: and my kingston is on the list, I click it, and off it goes to flash drive, after transfer is complete I remove the flash drive...all done!

minnie_tx any time you put a usb drive in your usb port, down in the systray by the clock a little icon is shown, when you have finished using your usb drive and want to remove it from the pc it is very important that you go to that icon and select to safely remove the item from your computer, if you do not do that you run the risk of damaging the pc as well as the usb drive and your data could be corrupted.
In the link I gave above for the use of thumb drives it covers that and shows the icon.

I would not use a flash drive to backup files. They are easily misplaced like your set of keys.

I use them for file transfers.

It's better to backup to DVDs.

You may need to know about formating flash drives.

Many computers have multiple slots outside for different kinds of memory chips. Thats another way to copy files to.

dcarch

As regular readers will recognize, I recommend if your data is irreplaceable or you are emotionally attached to it you should make multiple backups across various media. All media corrupts and/or fails. So by doing this protocol the odds of total loss are greatly reduced.

And remember, though archive quality CDs and DVDs are more expensive their manufacturing process makes them more time lasting.

DA