RE: LARGE db dump/restore for upgrade question

> Any suggestion on how to prepare for the next upgrade would be
> appreciated.

I think it has to be said that if you want decent performance on excessively
large (50GB+) databases, you're going to need excessively good hardware to
operate it on. Buy a 3ware IDE RAID controller (www.hypermicro.com) and a
stripe a couple of seagate 80GB IDE drives (the new ones have an awesome
transfer rate). Turn of fsync, and use softupdates or even async I/O.

I am guessing though you've already done all of the above. You might have
to go beefier hardware, for PCs that means DDR SDRAM/Rambus, and a 64 bit
PCI 3ware card with 4 or 8 hard drives.

Hope that helps

Andrew