diff --git a/src/DatasetAPI/Datasets.jl b/src/DatasetAPI/Datasets.jl
index 766bc560..7ca12040 100644
--- a/src/DatasetAPI/Datasets.jl
+++ b/src/DatasetAPI/Datasets.jl
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 module Datasets
 #import ..Cubes.Axes: axsym, axname, CubeAxis, findAxis, CategoricalAxis, RangeAxis, caxes
-import ..Cubes: Cubes, YAXArray, concatenatecubes, CleanMe, subsetcube, copy_diskarray, setchunks, caxes
+import ..Cubes: Cubes, YAXArray, concatenatecubes, CleanMe, subsetcube, copy_diskarray, setchunks, caxes, readcubedata
 using ...YAXArrays: YAXArrays, YAXDefaults, findAxis
 using DataStructures: OrderedDict, counter
 using Dates: Day, Hour, Minute, Second, Month, Year, Date, DateTime, TimeType, AbstractDateTime
@@ -178,6 +178,12 @@ function Base.getproperty(x::Dataset, k::Symbol)
         x[k]
     end
 end
+
+function readcubedata(ds::Dataset)
+    inmemcubes = OrderedDict(key=> readcubedata(val) for (key, val) in pairs(ds.cubes))
+    Dataset(inmemcubes, ds.axes, ds.properties)
+end
+
 Base.getindex(x::Dataset, i::Symbol) =
 haskey(x.cubes, i) ? x.cubes[i] :
 haskey(x.axes, i) ? x.axes[i] : throw(ArgumentError("$i not found in Dataset"))
diff --git a/test/Datasets/datasets.jl b/test/Datasets/datasets.jl
index e7789cb0..b0590b9e 100644
--- a/test/Datasets/datasets.jl
+++ b/test/Datasets/datasets.jl
@@ -319,6 +319,11 @@ end
     @test ds.b.data == y
     @test ds.b.chunks == b.chunks
 
+    @test ds.b.data isa AbstractDiskArray
+    inmemds = readcubedata(ds)
+    @test !isa(inmemds.b.data, AbstractDiskArray)
+
+
     ds2 = Dataset(c=c)
     savedataset(ds2, path=f, backend=:zarr, append=true)
     ds = open_dataset(f, driver=:zarr)