psql is slow and it does not take much resources

Hi all,

I've been searching around for an answer to this, but I coulnd't find
anything. So here we go.

I am running PostgreSQL 8.1.3 on Red Hat on an Intel server with 2GB
of RAM and lot of free HD space.

I have a very large dump file, more then 4GB, to recreate a database.
When I run:

psql -Uuser -q -dmydatabase <mydump.sql &

It works, but is slow, it inserts about 1.000 record in 10 seconds.
But the curious thing is that if I check the resources of the server
it seems that psql is not using them much. "top" says that postgres is
using around 2% of the processor and psql around 1% so that server is
only 3% used. "top" also says that more or less 48% idle and
50%waiting...

In the other hand the memory seems to be very high...

What could be the problem? Is that the server is just slow reading
from the file? It has a 300GB SCSI drive.

Is there any way to make this work faster? I would like to recreate
the db at least once a month, but this taked too much time...

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Javier.