diff --git a/viscy/data/hcs.py b/viscy/data/hcs.py
index 9ee37185..8831bdd7 100644
--- a/viscy/data/hcs.py
+++ b/viscy/data/hcs.py
@@ -318,6 +318,8 @@ def __init__(
         augmentations: list[MapTransform] = [],
         caching: bool = False,
         ground_truth_masks: Path | None = None,
+        persistent_workers=False,
+        prefetch_factor=None,
     ):
         super().__init__()
         self.data_path = Path(data_path)
@@ -334,6 +336,8 @@ def __init__(
         self.caching = caching
         self.ground_truth_masks = ground_truth_masks
         self.prepare_data_per_node = True
+        self.persistent_workers = persistent_workers
+        self.prefetch_factor = prefetch_factor
 
     @property
     def cache_path(self):
@@ -521,8 +525,8 @@ def train_dataloader(self):
             batch_size=self.batch_size // self.train_patches_per_stack,
             num_workers=self.num_workers,
             shuffle=True,
-            persistent_workers=bool(self.num_workers),
-            prefetch_factor=4 if self.num_workers else None,
+            prefetch_factor=self.prefetch_factor if self.num_workers else None,
+            persistent_workers=self.persistent_workers,
             collate_fn=_collate_samples,
             drop_last=True,
         )
@@ -533,8 +537,8 @@ def val_dataloader(self):
             batch_size=self.batch_size,
             num_workers=self.num_workers,
             shuffle=False,
-            prefetch_factor=4 if self.num_workers else None,
-            persistent_workers=bool(self.num_workers),
+            prefetch_factor=self.prefetch_factor if self.num_workers else None,
+            persistent_workers=self.persistent_workers,
         )
 
     def test_dataloader(self):