Thanks lots, Jeremy.

    I haven't used hdparm; I see it does a lot (much
to learn, per the man page).

    I'm thinking of writing a for loop and capture
start and end time: will that be useful? (Probably
I'll use DASH, Python, and C, just to compare
those three.)

    I haven't had the need to use lspci or lsmod or
most other diagnostic tools (not till now, so I'm
mostly lost).

    More thanks, I'll probably be able to send info
tomorrow (machine is not home).