Insert problems on very large DB

[Roland Rabben]

I have a problem with inserting records into my very large MySQL database. I am inserting about 60 million records pr. day using the LOAD DATA INFILE command. I will keep the records for about 90 days. Total number of records is about 5,4 billion records.

The table looks like this:
CREATE TABLE `events` (
`player_id` smallint(8) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
`ad_id` smallint(8) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
`start_date` datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
`duration` smallint(5) unsigned default '0'
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

I have created an Index like this:
CREATE INDEX date_index ON events (start_date,player_id,ad_id);

Inserting records on my indexed table takes very long time. When I reach 300 million records, it takes about 30 sec to insert a file containing 20 000 rows. It is no problem to insert when table is empty or when Index switched off.

I have tried tweaking the KEY_BUFFER setting. But my Index grows too large to store in KEY_BUFFER. I have also tried dropping the index during insert, but I have problem creating the index after insert is complete.

I am running MySQL 4.1 on a Widows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, 1 GB RAM, Dual 2,4Ghz Xeon processor. 3X16GB SCSI RAID5 (10 000 RPM).
It will run on a larger server when in production. Any recommendations?

What can I do to speed up my INSERTS?