[otrs] OTRS Slows down (due to searching large database)

Good Day, I'm running version OTRS 1.3.2 for a large company and the database has become pretty huge, 8,7GB. It seems as though whenever someone runs a search without narrowing it down, the whole system becomes extremely slow. Is their any way to limit the amount of system resources used by the search function or to place the attachments in another database to try and reduce the size? Thanks Rudi