Backup advice

So I feel a need to start backing up my servers. To that end, I've decided that it's easier for me to grab an external USB drive instead of a tape. It would seem dump/restore are the tools of choice. My backup strategy is pretty much "I don't want to be screwed if my RAID goes away". That said I have a few questions along those lines:

- Most articles I've read suggest a full backup, followed by incremental backups. Is there any real reason to adopt that format for a backup strategy like mine, or is it reasonable to just do a dump 0 nightly? I think the only reason to do just one full backup per 'cycle' would be to preserve system resources, as I'm sure it's fairly taxing on the system during dump 0 times.

- Can dump incrementally update an existing dump, or is the idea that a dump is a closed file and nothing except restore should ever touch it?

- How much does running a backup through gzip actually save? Is taxing the system to compress the dump and the extra time it takes actually worth it, assuming I have enough space on my backup drive to support a dump 0 or two?

- Other folks dumping to a hard drive at night? Care to share any of your experiences/rationale?

Thanks in advance.
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