Just nearly ruined some VHS-C tapes belonging to a friend while digitising them. They were very old, and badly tensioned, so as usual I spooled them through a couple of times.
Lots of tape drop-out at the start, but capture was going OKish until a big tape roll. Decided to clean the heads on my VHS. Next time playback was worse and now the sound was very poor; and looking at the tape there was edge damage. Looked at the other tape, no edge damage, started to capture it and still has some wobbles. Took the tape out and to my horror there now was edge damage!
To cut a long story short, it wasn't my VHS, but the adaptor cassette for converting the VHS-C cassettes. The battery was rather long in the tooth, but it did seem to be lacing up the tape albeit slowly. When I replaced the battery, the damage stopped occuring, so the old battery mustn't of had enough power to correctly load the tape.
No serious damage done, as the lost material was the usual faffing about. but if I'd have let the tape run all the way through I'd have ruined all the sound.
So, I'd humbly suggest you change the battery if you have any doubt 