I guess the Btrfs snapshopt approach is not possible for your setup since the devices you want to backup are not Btrfs and cannot create snapshots.
Yes, the snapshots will be the size of the whole partition, I had not thought about that problem. I do not know if it is possible to create incremental snapshots with Btrfs.
How can you pirate Photoshop and Elements? They are WebAssembly binaries that phone home before you are allowed to use them.