GPSoft sometimes read the forum but there's no guarantee that they will read (or remember) every post. They'll pay more attention to people who bother to write to them.
There's no need to discuss the empty-drive pop-up; it will be addressed by making the message non-modal (which is about all I can say right now).
I agree that the speed-timer stuff is pretty obscure. I'd like to see the progress dialog itself have a button which toggles between the two modes.
That's definitely worth reporting to GPSoftware separately. If it's just dropped into the middle of this forum thread it'll easily be overlooked. (Please see Ask one question per post.)
Thanks for the I/O priority URL. How would you see that being used in Opus? As an argument to the Copy command or something else?