diff --git a/src/llmtuner/dsets/preprocess.py b/src/llmtuner/dsets/preprocess.py
index c3af364c..18f01db1 100644
--- a/src/llmtuner/dsets/preprocess.py
+++ b/src/llmtuner/dsets/preprocess.py
@@ -1,8 +1,12 @@
+import os
 import tiktoken
-from typing import TYPE_CHECKING, Any, Dict, Generator, List, Literal, Union
 from itertools import chain
+from typing import TYPE_CHECKING, Any, Dict, Generator, List, Literal, Union
+
+from datasets import load_from_disk
 
 from llmtuner.extras.constants import IGNORE_INDEX
+from llmtuner.extras.logging import get_logger
 from llmtuner.extras.template import get_template_and_fix_tokenizer
 
 if TYPE_CHECKING:
@@ -12,6 +16,9 @@ if TYPE_CHECKING:
     from llmtuner.hparams import DataArguments
 
 
+logger = get_logger(__name__)
+
+
 def preprocess_dataset(
     dataset: Union["Dataset", "IterableDataset"],
     tokenizer: "PreTrainedTokenizer",
@@ -19,7 +26,6 @@ def preprocess_dataset(
     training_args: "Seq2SeqTrainingArguments",
     stage: Literal["pt", "sft", "rm", "ppo"]
 ) -> Union["Dataset", "IterableDataset"]:
-    column_names = list(next(iter(dataset)).keys())
     template = get_template_and_fix_tokenizer(data_args.template, tokenizer)
 
     if data_args.train_on_prompt and template.efficient_eos:
@@ -226,7 +232,12 @@ def preprocess_dataset(
         preprocess_func = preprocess_unsupervised_dataset
         print_function = print_unsupervised_dataset_example
 
+    if data_args.cache_path is not None and os.path.exists(data_args.cache_path):
+        logger.warning("Loading dataset from disk will ignore other data arguments.")
+        return load_from_disk(data_args.cache_path)
+
     with training_args.main_process_first(desc="dataset map pre-processing"):
+        column_names = list(next(iter(dataset)).keys())
         kwargs = {}
         if not data_args.streaming:
             kwargs = dict(
@@ -242,10 +253,15 @@ def preprocess_dataset(
             **kwargs
         )
 
+        if data_args.cache_path is not None and not os.path.exists(data_args.cache_path):
+            if training_args.should_save:
+                dataset.save_to_disk(data_args.cache_path)
+            raise SystemExit("Dataset saved, rerun this script with the same `--cache_file`.")
+
         if training_args.should_log:
             try:
                 print_function(next(iter(dataset)))
             except StopIteration:
-                raise ValueError("Empty dataset!")
+                raise RuntimeError("Empty dataset!")
 
         return dataset
diff --git a/src/llmtuner/hparams/data_args.py b/src/llmtuner/hparams/data_args.py
index ff246c00..184cc3ca 100644
--- a/src/llmtuner/hparams/data_args.py
+++ b/src/llmtuner/hparams/data_args.py
@@ -98,6 +98,10 @@ class DataArguments:
         default=False,
         metadata={"help": "Packing the questions and answers in the supervised fine-tuning stage."}
     )
+    cache_path: Optional[str] = field(
+        default=None,
+        metadata={"help": "Path to save or load the preprocessed datasets."}
+    )
 
     def __post_init__(self):
         if self.streaming and self.val_size > 1e-6 and self.val_size < 1:
@@ -106,6 +110,9 @@ class DataArguments:
         if self.streaming and self.max_samples is not None:
             raise ValueError("`max_samples` is incompatible with `streaming`.")
 
+        if self.streaming and self.cache_path:
+            raise ValueError("`cache_path` is incompatible with `streaming`.")
+
     def init_for_training(self, seed: int): # support mixing multiple datasets
         self.seed = seed
         dataset_names = [ds.strip() for ds in self.dataset.split(",")] if self.dataset is not None else []