[Gdal-dev] image tile question

[Haobo Yu]

Hi,

I'm new to this list, please pardon my ignorance.

I have several image files (in GeoTIFF) about 10000x10000 pixels each,
and I'd like to serve it through MapServer.  Because of its size, I'm
thinking that it might help if I cut it to smaller tiles.  While
searching in this list's archive, I found that the main relevant theme
was to build a tiled GeoTIFF file to break long scanlines, but I didn't
find discussion about how to cut a big GeoTIFF to smaller pieces while
providing correct georeference information to each smaller file.  If I
understand it correctly: without correct georeference, gdaltindex will
not work.

My questions are:

(1) Should I be concerned about cutting a GeoTIFF file to smaller
pieces?  I can think of reasons that finding image blocks inside a TIFF
can be faster than finding one image in a directory of 3000 files.  But
in reality, is a big tiled GeoTIFF file good enough to be served through
a MapServer?  

(2) If I need to create smaller tile images, is there a good tool/script
to cut a large GeoTIFF file?  I don't mind writing one, but didn't want
to reinvent the wheel, either.

Thank you very much.

- Haobo