I am running a DMA transfer through the DAC of an stmf303re nucleo, and was wondering if there was a difference between the HAL_DAC_Stop_DMA vs a HAL_DAC_Stop? I ask this because earlier on in my code I just used a HAL_DAC_Stop and it worked fine, however i now see that there is a HAL_DAC_Stop_DMA also and was wondering what the difference is?
If you started it with DMA you should stop it with the equivalent function. If you use the non-DMA stop function the ADC will stop but the DMA is still running waiting for the ADC to tell it more data is available. Obviously this will never come so the system is left in a funny state. Maybe the next start function can tidy up this funny state, or maybe it can't. Read the source of the functions if you want to find out the exact details.
Another possible problem of not using the DMA stop function could be that the last data produced by the ADC is still being copied by the DMA. This would mean that your destination buffer is not ready for you to use. Whether or not this causes a problem depends on how soon your code reads the destination buffer.