As I just helped a fellow N900 user with repairing his corrupted MyDocs partition I came to realize that N900 does not even try to repair any filesystem corruptions, nor does it in any way or form warn the user about it. Especially considering that it uses VFAT on both SD cards and on MyDocs and that VFAT is prone to corruption it's really an unforgivable hindsight from Nokia's part and should be done something about.

Personally, I'd design it like follows:

When the phone is starting up it finds a filesystem being corrupted and pauses the boot process. Brings up a full-screen warning, with text similar to following:

"The system has found filesystem errors on your phone. These may result in loss of files and complete inoperability of the system unless repaired. You have two choices:
* Attempt automatic repair - May result in some files being lost or truncated. Highly recommended to back up important files first.
* Start as read-only - You cannot create new files or modify existing files on the corrupted drive, but you can still read them. Use this option to back up anything important."

Allow the user to select either mode: if automatic repair is attempted parse the log and present it in a easily readable format and make note of all the files modified or lost. If read-only mode was selected add a tray icon that can be used to initiate the automatic repair or to get more help on how to back up and a few suggestions on exactly what one might wish to back up.


Why do I bring this up? Well, I am slightly afraid they haven't built anything like this in MeeGo either and thus it too could be in danger of having the same kinds of issues. I don't however really know where to forward my thoughts in order for them to actually reach any Nokia developers. And some discussion on the best approach could be in order.

Thoughts?