I have a PHP script that scores tests for about 2200 students. When it scores an individual student's record, MySQL writes the results out to a table for each item. The array for each individual student has about 225 values (i.e., has info on each test item).

This process takes about 1 min. and 40 secs. Not bad, but I notice that the hard drive is working furiously all the while.

Is there a way to optimize the memory so that the HD doesn't have to write the data for every student (which is what it seems to be doing), but can "bulk" update after a delay and speed up this process?

I've read a lot of information about tweaking MYSQL's use of memory, but it was too technical for me to understand. But if someone could direct me, I would be delighted to continue my research.

My computer has WINXP with 4 GB of memory. Lots of free disk space. Using localhost only.

Thanks,
Dave