How to avoid unzip of large test data on each "mvn test"

Hi all,

I'm in the process of switching to Maven for a large ANT project and have a
question regarding my test data.
I'd like those data to be versionned and stored in the Maven repo. But
currently those data are huge (let's say a 1-2 gigabytes once zipped). So I
imagine that if stored in the repo, each time I will run "mvn test" Maven
will have to unzip this big zip. It will take a lot of time...
Is there a best practise about it ?
Is there a way to store the data already unzipped somewhere and have mvn
test unzip the archive only if the version has changed ?
Any idea ?

François

PS: currently, the existing test code rely on the data being manually
unzipped once and for all at a hardcoded location on the disk :/ . Those
test data are currently not versionned (with all the related problems).