Embodiments of the present invention disclose a method and an apparatus for data preheating, which relate to database technologies, so as to increase a responding speed of a database system, reduce frequent IO on a magnetic disk, and improve overall performance of the database system. The method includes: when a database is started, reading hit ratio information from a flash memory device and reading user configuration information from a hard disk; obtaining a union set of a preset hot data table in the user configuration information and a hot data table in the hit ratio information; determining the total number of to-be-loaded hot data blocks from the union set; according to the storage proportions, determining the to-be-loaded hot data block to be stored into a shared buffer and the flash memory device; and separately storing the to-be-loaded hot data block into the shared buffer and the flash memory device.