Force macOS kernel to ignore an entire disk

[3460169]

Somehow I doubt this is feasible but I'll ask anyway

I need an entire disk in my system to be ignored, completely, by the kernel. Obviously it would make sense to just disconnect the disk physically but it is an internal disk in an late 2012 iMac. And we all know that tearing open an iMac is a bit of a pain in the rump. So I need to achieve the effect of "unplugging the disk" in software and have the kernel ignore the device completely, so far as to not create any device files for it at all in /dev/ or otherwise.

Having repair work done would not be cost-effective; this system is on the vintage list with Mojave being the last-supported OS release. It needs to last me another year and is currently running High Sierra off an external TB drive that I managed to incorporate into a Fusion Drive w/ the internal SSD. This in itself was a pita to achieve, involving many late-nite-into-early-morning command-line shenanigans with diskutil and gpt. I only wish I took good notes along the way lol

Anyway -- does anyone know of some magical kernel parameter, perhaps, that could achieve what I'm looking for here? A lot of times when this system boots it doesn't even see the internal HDD but sometimes it does and if any process tries to touch the associated device files (e.g. Disk Utility) the system becomes unusable while it has an aneurysm.

TIA,

 

[treekram]

I don't think there's a way to prevent an internal disk from powering up if you don't want to open up the computer. You can try the following to prevent the volume from mounting at startup:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-7942

If you try that and it doesn't work, write a post - there are other ways that people have suggested to try to do this.

 

[3460169]

I don't think there's a way to prevent an internal disk from powering up if you don't want to open up the computer. You can try the following to prevent the volume from mounting at startup:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-7942

If you try that and it doesn't work, write a post - there are other ways that people have suggested to try to do this.

Thanks, although this disk isn't going to mount anyway (at startup or any time) because the partition table was intentionally blown away. It's fine that the disk is powered up but ideally I'd like the kernel to not acknowledge its presence. You're probably right that there isn't a way to do it. ¯\(ツ)/¯