[R-sig-Geo] read.gal() for large data sets

[Juta Kawalerowicz]

Dear List, 

I am looking for a general strategy for the following problem. I have a large data set with 200 000 rows and 50 variables. Along the lines of Anselin's R workbook I have used GeoDa to creata weights (200 Mb file), but when I am trying to do read them into R by using 

library(spdep)
weights<-read.gal("weights.gal")

it does not seem to work (or maybe I should to wait for more than one hour?). My computer runs on i7-2630QM CPU with 4 GB RAM. Any suggestions? In principle - could somebody advise me on what are the strategies for spatial analysis on large data sets? 

Thanks, 
Juta