Big databases

Hi R users:

I am using R 2.01. over a LINUX(Scientific Linux CERN)
 platform and I got the following problem:
It takes too much time (more than 6 hours, because I
stop the process) to read a
270MB database. I am using read.table() function.

Is there any workaround to read faster a big data base?

Thank you for your help.

Kenneth