Terrain Generator design decision

Hi,
I am writing a flight simulator in opnegl -- I am improving my
Terrain Generator and I am confronted with a design decision:

I (as many I am sure) generate a terrain from a height map which is an
image. The whiter the pixel the higher in elevation.

At the moment I have one large height-map, which as the terrain gets
larger will simply become a very large image file. Or I can build a
grid of height map images....

I am unsure if one method is better then another. Any opinions as to
why one method might be better then another?

Thanks so much.
.

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