How to remove storage pool temporarily?

I have LXD running on a laptop with limited SSD storage (Ubuntu 20.04LTS, LXD 4.16, latest/stable snap). I have configured an additional storage pool on a removable USB3 hard drive so I can launch containers on this removable storage.
I have successfully created a storage pool on the removable device

lxc storage create lxd-btrfs-stick btrfs source=/dev/sdb1

and then launched a new container using that storage

lxc launch images:ubuntu/21.04 -s lxd-btrfs-stick

Container runs as expected.

If, however I remove the storage and start the host laptop without, lxd does not appear to start and any attempts to communicate using lxc commands return

Error: Get “http://unix.socket/1.0”: EOF

If I replace the storage device and run snap restart lxd it will then respond correctly, the container on the removable device will start and is accessible.

Is there a way I can temporarily disconnect this storage (and associated containers) from the pool so lxc will run without it?

Thanks for any advice.

Currently, no. LXD makes sure all pools are present on startup and will refuse to start if one is missing.

This is primarily so some checks and updates can be reliably applied on startup.
We do have a plan however to change this with: https://github.com/lxc/lxd/issues/8730

That’s helpful to know, thanks.

Is it possible to run two instances of the LXD snap on the same host? That would give me the option to run one with internal storage, then I could start the second one which uses the external pool when I have it connected.