One aspect of the invention is a method for restoring data, which for example, includes receiving a request for at least a portion of the data. This example also includes creating a directory entry for the data in a virtual file system, and allocating storage space for the data. This example further includes initializing a block virtualization indicator to a value indicating that the data is not available. This example additionally includes writing a subset of the data to the storage space, and changing the block virtualization indicator to a value indicating that the data is available.