After doing some additional research, ArsTechnica pointed this out and said the fix was to manually stop recording (see
How To Set Up The Dashcam In A Tesla Running Firmware v9.0 | CleanTechnica). Sorry for the long link and possible repost. I don’t see this posted anywhere. I will try this and share results.
RE: Drive size
Perhaps I missed a drive size requirement. However, I am leaning more toward theory that there is coding issue for stop/start of video. There may also be something to the USB drive performance specs. More observation/testing needed.