Here is the article explaining why dd is not the best way to measure HDD performance. The main point is no multithreading in it. vdbench is recommended.

How to find out the symlink source (without readlink)

$ cat basher
#!/usr/local/bin/bash
string="lrwxr-xr-x 1 mmmm users 66 Sep 4 09:58 LINK_SEND -> /apps/aaa/home/mmmm/FFFFF/Apps/RRRRRR/unit_tests/TARGET_SEND"
echo $string
string=${string##* }
echo $string
string=${string%/*}
echo $string
exit 0
$
$
$ ./basher
lrwxr-xr-x 1 mmmm users 66 Sep 4 09:58 LINK_SEND -> /apps/aaa/home/mmmm/FFFFF/Apps/RRRRRR/unit_tests/TARGET_SEND
/apps/aaa/home/mmmm/FFFFF/Apps/RRRRRR/unit_tests/TARGET_SEND
/apps/aaa/home/mmmm/FFFFF/Apps/RRRRRR/unit_tests
$

source