An incremental synchronous hierarchical system restoration system. A hierarchical system, such as a file system, that has an incompletely populated hierarchy, such as a directory structure, is incrementally restored in response to each of at least some successive hierarchical system commands. For instance, in some embodiments, the hierarchical system restoration may be a just-in-time hierarchical system restoration that restores portions of the hierarchical system hierarchy just in time to provide the visualizations used for each hierarchical system command response. By so doing, the restoration system provides the illusion that the hierarchical system has already been restored since the appropriate visualization and functionality is provided in response to each hierarchical system command, just as a fully populated hierarchical system would. The manner of acquiring and populating file system hierarchies is especially efficient so as to make such restoration possible in substantial real-time.