Given how dirt cheap external drives are now, I wouldn't bother with USB flash drives for backup purposes, too small, slow, flakey....

A flash drive is a drive like any other. I do not have cold hard stats but Neither flash drives nor Hard Drives are perfectly reliable. Any kind of storage medium can just go poof. USB drives probably a little more often. Flash drive frailty is because of three reasons 1) Flash technology though wonderful and fast it can be in the form of an SSD is not only fallible but has a finite though theoretical read/write life span. 2) Flash especially in a memory stick is not the best quality 3) As others have pointed out jacking and jacking them even if you dismount properly first seems to cause issues.

The real trick is to have as many back ups as your data is important. Some people even purposely keep some documents in email as many providers provide multi GB for free assuming that data is not sensitive.

Answers to your questions.

1) Yes can just use Super if you want to, its a good product
2) Yes can also use a Flash Drive, you can not have too many copies of data. At least format it for A mac first instead of leaving it formatted Fat which is a PC format it came with but the mac can use. This is done from Disk Util and the format is known as MAC OS Extended journaled.

Thank you everyone, for continuing to clarify for me and offer options and input!

Anthlover, I did not know this at all, about formatting it for a mac, or how to do it until now!!!

Gran

The usefulness of a bootable backup is grossly overrated.

The argument goes: If my main drive fails, and I have a bootable backup, I can get up and running immediately.

But my objection is: If you boot off your (only) backup, then YOU HAVE NO BACKUP! Sure, booting off your backup is quick, but it's also foolhardy.

At the very least, your first order of business after booting from it is to make a new backup of it. That takes just as long as restoring from a (non-bootable) backup.

If you have two (or more) backups, then I agree that making at least one of them bootable is a good idea. It lets you get up and running right away, at the cost of losing only one of your backups. But you're still going to want to get back to whatever level of backup coverage you're comfortable with, so the cost is the same. You need another drive to store the new backup, and you need to take the time to make it (in addition to whatever time is spent acquiring the new backup drive). If you frequently operate under hard deadlines, where not getting up-and-running immediately is a Big Deal, then by all means make sure one of your backups is bootable.

A whole-disk restore from Time Machine takes the same amount of time as a whole-disk restore from a clone. A Time Machine disk is bootable (into the equivalent of a Restore Partition). That doesn't get you up and running immediately, but unless you have multiple backups, you don't want to be up and running immediately. Backups first; business second.

Oh! Oh! Oh! I found out I have a Drop Box. I think I just click Save to Drop Box, or else I drag and drop stuff there, right?

Would that be a good backup for some of my documents and maybe even photos (until I need more memory [?] in it) ?

Gran

If you mean the "Drop Box" in your Public Folder, then no - this is just a folder on your drive that others can put files in for you on your network.
It offers no backup function - the files are on your drive the same as any other location.

What he said.

"A" drop box is a place other people can leave files for you.

"Drop Box" is a remote service. Go here: http://www.dropbox.com/
If it is familiar, then you have cloud-based storage and backup.

If you have never seen it before, then you don't.