The Flash Recovery Area contains:

• Archived logs *
• Backups
• Flashback logs

Oracle recommends that the size of the flash recovery area be at least twice the size of the database so that it can hold one backup and several archived logs.

*If you have configured your archived logs to be written to this location (with the USE_DB_RECOVERY_AREA flag in one of the locations), then it is important to monitor this space to ensure that it des not reach its capacity.

SQL> ALTER DATABASE BACKUP CONTROLFILE TO TRACE;

It would be backed up at the location specified at USER_DUMP_DEST initialization parameter with a name sid_ora_pid.trc