Not to be smug or anything, but you really need to keep a eye on your dashcam, and not least the memory card in it.
I myself have had high class brand memory cards go bad on me so fast they almost dident fill up 1 time ( 64 Gb ), and even if it work for starters then the memory card will most often be the weak link at least in a good camera.
When i once in a while take a look at my memory cards it take me about 5 minutes to verify that a 128 Gb card are fine,
First i look at time date stamps and how they correlate with my drives of lately as i can remember them at least ( dont drive much so i can literally have weeks of footage on a 128 Gb card )
I then proceed to see if select files will launch and play with my default windows 10 player, here i focus on first and last file in driving sessions.
So if the first file start some place weird, that is far from my home address or the places i frequent, then i know something might be wrong there.
Same with the last file in a session, if it end mid drive on some highway and not at home or a place i frequent or a gas station i might be visiting, then i know something might be wrong too.
Of course i dont play the whole 3 minutes of every file i take a look at, pretty much just make sure it start/end where i would expect, and then the player on my PC can play them.
As i said i dont drive much not even daily so i only have a look on my memory card every month or so, usually in relation with me having filmed some moron in traffic that just got to go on youtube.
I have 4 cameras in my car ( one each direction ) and the 2 side cameras i maybe only look at every 2 months, it is rare i get footage of them.
But the front and rear camera i do handle more often, and i think in total for maintenance and control i use about 10 - 15 minutes tops every month.
There are focus on the fact that cameras do not give a alarm when failing to record, that's a week spot on many older and current cameras.
With the SG9665GC that i also run you can always look for the blinking red record LED, i dont think it blink if the camera are not recording, but the location of the camera can mean this are not easy to do / a option.
Some new dashcams claim to be maintenance free and format free, but i would not trust that, the 10 minutes now and then are well spent.
Having looked at my dashcam footage for years now, i find that i am pretty set in where i drive, 99.9% of my drives are the same routes again and again, and i now know that if something worth saving happend in so and so intersection on the drive, i know that it will be the #8 file in that recording session that i have to look for.
Pretty scary how precise it is for me, normally its only off by a minute or so depending on my luck with the light in intersections i have passed by, the speed i know are always on the max limit.
