ahh, likely why it can be system intensive then
...
Myself what I'd do would be to have two backup cycles, one that does a full backup every month (or week) which tells mysql to dump all db's then tar up those dbs, then tar up your webspaces, then tar both of the tarred files together (easier to keep track of).
Then I'd have another which backs up MySQL every week (or day) then tar those files (compress with bzip to save space).
Then you'd have daily backups of sql data which generally constantly changes, and then monthly backups of your site space, basically similar to what i use.
