A USB flash drive should be in the pocket of every traveler for those times when you want to copy or share pictures or other files. And these drives are becoming more and more affordable.

I recently picked up an 8gb Toshiba Transmemory flash drive so I could give some friends about 1,000 high-resolution pictures. The pics wouldn’t fit on a single-layer conventional DVD, plus a USB drive would make it a lot easier for them to copy and share the files.

There are several flavors of this drive offered at different retailers, at prices ranging from around $20 to $30. The Toshiba Transmemory drive is simple—no fancy programs that launch when you plug it in, just fast, convenient, raw memory. The write speed is up to 3.9 MBytes/second with a read speed of up to 17 MBytes/second, with USB 2.0 compatibility.

If I could change anything about this drive, it would be the design of the protective cover. It could come off fairly easily if the drive is attached to a keychain and shaken around in your pocket.

These drives come in sizes up to a whopping 64gb. The 8gb is at a sweet spot in pricing right now. But look for the larger drives to drop in price in the future as even higher-capacity models are introduced. The 8gb model currently sells for just under $30 at Amazon.

Unlike hard drives, USB flash drives don’t have any moving parts that can break so they are very reliable. And if you haven’t checked prices lately, you may be in for a pleasant surprise.