I have a Sandisk V-Mate DVR that uses SD memory cards. The seller on eBay it was bought from (new in the never opened box, seller in United States) sold it with a 4G Micro SD card. On Sunday, Febuary 28, I made the mistake of trying to stop it in the middle of a scheduled recording by turning off the power switch after it wouldn’t respond to the remote.
That was a mistake because it ruined the SD card, causing what was a 4g card to suddenly be a 8.83m card. I went on eBay and found a 8g Micro SD with an adapter from a seller with a high seller score and a 99.8% satisfaction rate. While I waited for it to arrive, I used a 1g regular size SD card I already had to make short recordings, both manual and setting it to record, so I know the Sandisk V-Mate DVR itself is working properly.
When the new 8g Micro SD arrived, I plugged it into my computer to make sure it was working properly. Right click/properties showed that there was about 36k of occupied space on the card although when looking at the window that should show what files are on the card, there was nothing (my system is set to show hidden files).
I figured that it was probably whatever drivers was needed for the card to work with whatever computer or DVR it was plugged into and thought nothing of it. I plugged it into my Sandisk V-Mate DVR and set the DVR to record from 10:55pm Tuesday to 12:40am Wendsday to record the local news and the Tonight Show.
I got up at about 11:30pm Tuesday and went about my usual off-night business while I waited for 12:40am to get here so I could view the recording. 12:40 came and went and it didn’t stop recording. I figured OK, I set the stop date wrong and now I have to wait for the card to fill up at which point the DVR will stop recording and I can safely remove the card.
I thought that since a one hour recording takes about 1.1g to 1.4g, it would fill up sometime between 6am and 7am. 7am came and went and it was still recording. When I went to bed at about noon, it was still recording. When I got up Wendsday evening and left at about 10:20pm to go to work, it was *still recording.*
Now I have this problem of why is it still recording beyond the time I set it to stop, beyond the point at which the card should have no memory left and how do I stop it from recording without damaging the memory card?
As for the issue of cutting power to the DVR causing damage to the card, what happens if there’s a power outage for whatever reason while it’s recording? Will I have to buy a new memory card every time that happens?