prevent access to a hard drive completely

[Olive]

My internal hard disk is dead: it makes a strange noise and remain in 
the position on indefinitely. I have installed Linux on an external hard 
drive (and I boot from a CD since this is an old laptop not being able 
to boot from USB). I would like to prevent the kernel to access the 
internal hard drive completely. Even if I do not access it; the kernel 
read a bit from it; among other to get information on the partition 
table. Is it possible to prevent the kernel to even see the drive? This 
is an IDE hard disk.

Olive
PS I am not currently on Debian but I like the list (and I am sure the 
answer to this question should be generic)


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