On a different subject, I taped my first event... a pretty healthy balance of triumph and disaster. It was music and speaking, in a church. The musicians gave me a soundboard feed and let me set the level for line-in into the DR2d. Those speaking used the built-in PA whose output I decided to grab along with room and audience with my 4060s (in boundary config) and the Tinybox I got through the Yard Sale (Kennedy, oy!): 4060s>TB(low)>DR2d mic-in. Needless to say, I was running Dual_Line. At the first transition from music to speaking, I decided to unplug from the soundboard with the deck rolling, motivated by some obscure impulse I'd prefer to leave unanalysed. That was when I noticed the "Writing Failed" message. There begins a region of memory painful to revisit. I can say with certainty that I resumed recording several times, each attempt eventually ending in the same error message. Inexplicably, one of those efforts resulted in 27 minutes of audio that happened to capture the key speeches it had been my purpose to record (the triumph referred to above was a fortunate accident). As the error messages continued like hammer-blows to the head, at some length it occurred to me to change SD cards, and the rest went without incident. The manual (!?!) includes "Writing Failed" among the messages it says to address by rebooting. I did power down to change cards, leaving open the possibility that it was not changing cards but rather the rebooting that cleared up the problem. There also remains the mystery that on the first card, one file succeeded between failures (I don't think I rebooted before deciding to change cards, but it is possible). I've also put the 8GB card back in later--unaltered--and recorded 30 minutes with no problem.
The fails occurred using a SanDisk Ultra Class 10 (30 MB/s) 8GB SDHC. This series is on Tascam's approved list, but not this size: the list (how old?) tops out at 4GB for the Ultras. I had done numerous tests on that card, without fail, files I wiped off with a FULL FORMAT a day or two before the gig. I don't remember whether I had retested between formatting and taping. Also, none of the tests was more than a couple of minutes long. I switched cards mid-event with a totally sketchy Chinese 2GB SD marked "Micro Center" that came with the deck I got used on eBay.
I know this deck's sometimes brittle relationship with recording media has been discussed here, but wonder how well we understand why it happens and how confidently we can say it won't happen if certain conditions are met. Fellow tapers, your thoughts and experience, please!