Too log to load the job list

We are using Muster Vertex V4.5 with Maya 7. Muster Server is installed on a windows 2003 PC and all the render nodes are running on Linux. Recently, the dispatcher is taking really long (around 20-25 minutes) to load the job list and the list of nodes. Please can you suggest any solution to reduce this time?

We never had this problem before but recently we have a large number of jobs on the farm. The status.dat and status.bak files in the Vertex folder are nearly 175 MB each. Is this is the reason for it? Last time these files were normally 60 MB.

Thank you.