I am going to set up Linux on a USB Flash Drive and want to either install to the drive or run a Live Distribution from it since I want to stay with the distro I have on my hard drive.
What size or type of drive should I use? I have access to a Corsair Voyager 16GB. Is 16GB enough and would the speed of it be enough?
I have seen other drives such as the OCZ Rally 2 which have faster write and read speeds.

16GB is more than enough to install a Linux distro on. You can fit all the software you use from a large distro in 6GB-10GB.

If you pick a small distro like puppy or DSL you could fit it in about 100MB. Still at least you will have plenty of space for keeping files on the stick as well.

As for speed any USB 2.0 will be able to handle a light distro easily especially one that loads into RAM like DSL. For bigger distros you might find a performance hit. Get the fastest read speed you can although I would think your corsair would be fast enough.

If you are buying a new stick and have the money try and get a single level device over a Multi level. there more robust and have quicker R/W times

I've tried several different sticks and things fail variously or I brick the stick trying to repartition and make file systems. Clearly there is a loose nut in the ops chair. What might I be doing wrong?

Stumpled,
~~~ 0;-Dan

I think it should be fine

I have 2 kingston cheap data-travelers
and they are bulletproof

what distros you wanna put on there?
If you need help setting up syslinux.cfg or grub menu.lst
please holler and I'll help out?