Saving 700 images locally from an XML file which loads every 5 minutes
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I have an application that reads an xml file every 5 minutes (using a cronjob) and saves about 700 url's to images inside a database.
After 5 minutes, most of the images are deleted and the process begins again.

My site would be allot faster if i'd save the images locally but I want some advice on the way to do it.

1. I tried using fopen, curl - but writing so many images at once just brakes everything down.
2. How about saving them as bloob? How much will this affect the speed?

Any ideas?