I don't think there's much you can do. I was waiting ages for the game to load before I replaced my hard drive, but I think 5 mins is probably faster than it takes here.
What would be ideal IMHO is if there was a WHDLOad option that allowed accessing the CD, but I think WHDLoad precludes this possibility.
Its a drag because I've not been able to get the very effective CD32 emulation that came with IDEfix to work since I went down the Mediator route.
compromises, compromises....
