Safely Disabling a Hard dirve

Hello, I have been having issues with random freeze up on my pc. It seems to have started to occur once my 2nd harddrive was installed. I would like to troubleshoot by temporarily disabling the 2nd harddrive.

What pitfalls should i avoid? Do i need to uninstall the driver for the 2nd drive or can i just remove the cable and power?

Im running windows 2000.