Also probably they don't see enough demand for people being able to effortlessly reflash/reprogram their harddisks to invest the necessary R&D to make it work s

Also probably they don't see enough demand for people being able to effortlessly reflash/reprogram their harddisks to invest the necessary R&D to make it work seamlessly. There are hundreds of tricks to make flashing more reliable and unsusceptible to data corruption, but it's cheaper to just use a DOS tool and write "DO NOT TURN OFF OR RESET YOUR COMPUTER!" on the screen.