[Arny Krueger[_4_]]

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
Trevor writes:

Surely it's just writing to the card all along, so why would you expect
it
to take a few seconds to "finalise" anything before "writing to the
card"?

Data is probably held in an internal buffer before being written to the
card.

A relatively small amount, a few seconds worth at most.

This buffer must be flushed to the card before the system is shut down, in
order to avoid any loss of data. Depending on the size of the buffer and
other
factors, there may or may not be a perceptible delay when the buffer is
flushed.

Closing a file also requires some kind of table of contents entry to be
updated, and there may be some work needed along the lines of updating file
allocation tables.

An experiment to demonstrate this would be to pull the batteries out while
the
recorder is recording sound, although that's not an experiment that I
intend
to carry out.

If the media is removable, see what happens when you simpy pull that out.

If there is indeed a buffer flush, the card content is likely to
be corrupted if the batteries are removed while recording is in progress.

Not necessarily. There can be a big capacitor inside the box that keeps it
alive long enough for housekeeping to finish.