Virtually disconnect an external drive?

This may be a dumb question, but I will ask anyway... It's recommended (as far as I've read) that external drives should be disconnected from the PC, as a means of preventing loss of valuable data in the event of ransomware infection.

My question is, is there a way within Windows (or a 3rd party software) to virtually disconnect an external drive, without the nuisance of physically unplugging it (and having to plug-in again each time)? I mean by this, that access to an external drive can be cut-off with a setting/s rather than manual disconnection.