Spin down / spin up External HD

Morning all,
I'm hoping someone can help me out on a request.
I currently run four external HD's at home, each with there own tasks and storage needs. I have set (using pmset in Terminal) my discs spin down times to 5 mins rather than 10, so these sleep quicker than normal when not used. I'd like to be able to spin down / spin up these disc's on instruction, rather than waiting the 5 mins.
I have put together Applescripts which I then build into Automator which I can run from Finder, and would like to have a simular script to spin down / up the drives on instruction.
I'm very new to writing scripts so this maybe something simple, but I just can't find a solution. Anyone got any ideas ?
Many thanks in advance.
Neil Holmes.

Sorry, I misunderstood you to already have the commands you needed for pmset, so I didn't look too closely at that command.
What I have determined is that you don't have the ability to force the disk to spin down immediately - but rather, as you have already discovered, to set the idle duration before it will spin down; the minimum being one minute. (I also noticed that to make a setting stick you need administrator permissions, so I have included that syntax here.)
I am not sure if this gets you any further forward, but the AppleScript syntax to spin down after one minute idle would be*:
do shell script "pmset -a disksleep 1" user name "<adminuser>" password "<adminpass>" with administrator privileges
and setting to never spin down would be*:
do shell script "pmset -a disksleep 0" user name "<adminuser>" password "<adminpass>" with administrator privileges
I am probably being stupid here, but wouldn't it be dangerous if you were able to spin down the disk on command?
*In each case, open Script Editor, cut-n-paste the text between the lines and amend for your username and password - retaining the double quotation marks, but not the braces - and click run.

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