[GRASS-user] Import question

[Adam Dershowitz, Ph.D., P.E.]

I have a large ortho image, that is in MrSID format  (A full county at high res).  The file is ~3.5 gig.  It covers a much larger area then I need.  So I set my region to the size that I do need, and then imported.  The import took something like 10 hrs.  And, I now see that in my PERMANENT folder I have 3 files that are each 15 gig (one red, one blue, one green),  
The map was imported, but if I zoom to the size of the current map, it seems that the whole map was imported, not just the area inside the current region.
  
I thought that imports are cropped to the current region?  Am I mistaken about this?  Is there some setting to cause this to happen?  

I did the import with r.in.gdal.  I am using the binary release of 6.4 on a Mac.  
The reasons that I care are 1)  This map, for a small area of interest, it taking up 45 gig on my hard drive.  2)  Because the map is so large, it takes a while for the display to update when I make any changes.  

Any guidance?

Thanks,

--Adam