Getting debian to ignore hdb on bootup

[Jonathan Kaye <jdkaye10@yahoo.es>]

Hi all,
Hopefully an easy question. I have a dodgy 2nd hard disk which I can't
remove for the moment. On bootup I get a million error messages like this:
 device hdb1, logical block 1
hdb: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdb: dma_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=65, high=0,
low=65, sector=65
ide: failed opcode was: unknown
end_request: I/O error, dev hdb, sector 65
Buffer I/O error on device hdb1, logical block 2
hdb: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdb: dma_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=65, high=0,
low=65, sector=63
ide: failed opcode was: unknown
end_request: I/O error, dev hdb, sector 63

Eventually bootup gets through this but now booting takes about 15 minutes.
Is there anything in the startup routine that I can alter so that the
system ignores /dev/hdb?
/dev/hda is fine and that's where my system resides. I tried disabling the
2nd hard disk from the bios but that didn't seem to have any effect.

Thanks for any help on this matter.
Jonathan
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