> I suppose disconnecting the SATA-cable would make the hdd/sdd invisible to the system...
On a laptop? All laptops I've seen have the hard disk plugged directly into the motherboard, with no cables in between. Having a SATA cable is more of a desktop thing.
Weird, I do have exactly the opposite experience, incl. a bay for a second SDD (on a gaming laptop/workstation one). Ability to replace an old HDD with SDD on a 6y old laptop... and then replace the optical drive with another HDD (just for the storage)
Perhaps nowadays it's the norm to have it all soldered in but I'd just not buy such.
I think a minority of laptops have soldered-on HDs. More have them hard-attached now than a few years ago (when almost none did), and many recent laptops have "mSATA" connections, which is more like a RAM connection than a cable. You could achieve the same thing with an mSATA connection as you would with unplugging a cable by removing the mSATA drive/card, and applying a thin strip of something non-conductive over the pins, and plugging it back in. Just please don't use something adhesive; the residue after a few applications/removals can screw up connectivity when you want it to work.
That said, I'd imagine there's an economies-of-scale advantage to having soldered-on drives (to say nothing of the economic benefits of un-upgradability: sorry folks, but there aren't enough people to whom part-swap upgrades are important to sway the hardware industry at large on this issue, though a few small manufacturers/lines will probably target that market). As a result, I'd imagine that we'll see more and more of them in years to come, though I'd be happy to be wrong about that.
'course, I don't recommend bringing your data into a country you consider hostile regardless of whether you've set it up so a cursory search doesn't find it. If the country really is hostile to your interests, that won't stop them if they want your info.
On much older MacBooks that is true. MacBooks since around 2015 have had mSATA "RAM-style" connectors, and I've heard that some more recent models have soldered-on drives, though I haven't seen this myself.
