Backup large directory to usb drive

[shep]

I've been using 2 x 4.7GB dvd's to perform infrequent /home backups and just obtained a 16GB usb3.0 thumbdrive. I can dedicate the usb3.0 strictly for backups.

I would like to begin encrypting my backups and doing them more frequently and did get some search hits using pipes to gpg or p7zip.


Currently, dvd backups had to be done in 3 steps: 1) generate tar.gz files. 2) produce the *.iso and then burn the iso via growisofs. If I attempted to have growisofs burn the tar.gz directly, it would hang

Given the problems I had with single commands performing sequential operations on large files; I'm looking for advice.

Generate a ~8GB encrypted tar.gz and then copy to the usb drive vs mounting the usb drive and use it as an output target for the tar.gz? Mount the usb drive w/ encryption? Use rsync?