Methods and apparatuses for providing a data storage system having snapshot restore capabilities are provided. In particular, snapshots may be taken to represent a state of a storage volume at different times. The state of the storage volume may be returned to the state represented by any snapshot even while the storage volume continues to accept read and write operations. Furthermore, these features are provided in the context of a sparse snapshot structure, according to which multiple copies of individual data chunks are not maintained by the data storage system.