Saving large files quickly (less slowly) in PS CS3

I have some very large files (Document Size box in PS says 7GB, file size as a .psb about 3GB). I guess I should be happy that I can open and save these documents at all. But, on a fast Macintosh, save times are about 20 minutes, and open times about 10 minutes. I know that if I could save these as uncompressed TIFFs, the save and open times should be much faster, but I can't because the files are over the 4GB limit for a tiff. Is there anything I can do to speed up open and save times?
A

Peter and Tom
Thanks for your replies. Have you done any timing on this? I have done some, but didn't keep the results. But my impression is that RAM size and disk speed are relatively less important for save times, and that multiple processors (cores) are not helpful at all.
What I find is that my save times for a 3GB file are about 20 minutes, which is a write speed of about 2.5 MB/sec, which is well within the capacity of 100Base-T ethernet, and certainly nowhere near the limit of even a slow hard drive. So I don't think write time should have anything to do with it.
Similarly, while I have 14 GB of RAM, I don't think that makes much of a difference. The time it would take to read data out of a disk cache, put it into memory, and write it back out should be a short fraction of the save time. But, I must say, I have not bothered to pull RAM chips, and see if my save times vary.
I do find that maximize compatibility does affect things. However, I always leave this on for big files, as I like to be able to use the Finder to remind me which file is which, without firing up Photoshop (and waiting 10 minutes for the file to open). I find it always saves me time in the long run to "Maximize compatibility."
Now, not being a Photoshop Engineer, what I think is going on is that Photoshop is trying to compress the file when it saves it, and the compression is very slow. It also has no parallel processing (as noted from processor utilization rates in Activity Monitor). I suspect that the save code is very old, and that Adobe is loathe to change it because introducing bugs into saving makes for very unhappy customers. (I know, I was bitten by a save bug once in ?CS2?, can't remember).
Honestly, for my money, the best thing Adobe could do for me would be to put a switch or a slider for time/space tradeoffs in saving. Or, maybe somebody could come up with a TIFF replacement for files bigger than 4GB, and I could then saved uncompressed in that new "large-tiff" format.
Anyway, it looks like my original question is answered: there isn't anything I can do to significantly speed up save times, unless someone has figures on what a 10,000 RPM disk does to change open/save times, which I would love to see.
Cheers
A

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