Backup

[Emil Payne <ehspayne@yahoo.com>]

I have a 1 TB external USB drive with 362 GB used. I'd like to do a full 
backup to DVDs and then an incremental (or something) backup every month 
or two, also to DVDs or CDs. I'd like the backups to be compressed in 
order to save space (i.e. - the number of DVDs/CDs used).  What is a 
good program to do this with?  Or, what is a good step of different 
programs to do this with?  I'm a home user with decent knowledge of 
Debian/Linux, but not a shell programmer.