Slow disk access: 1.4m to do a select count over 23GB table.

[Andrés Tello]

Hi, I'm using mysql 4.1.21, a legacy system. Next step to migrate it, but
for now, I need the community help.

I have a 23GB table, if I do a select count(over_an_index) from table it
uses 1.4minutes to read. The main issue is that this table is the main table
of a system and each query is taking too long to complete.

How can I optimize the access of the database?

any mysql variable I could use?
or how can I load the index into memory? I have 32GB of ram XD plenty to
useit into something more useful....


Thanks.