Hard drive parameters

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Hi all,
Having a hard disk, how it is possible to know its paramaters : number of heads, cylinders, total number of sectors, serial number, ... ?
I'm not interested in Windows API as I'm actually working on an embedded system where all I've got is some API to read and write blocks from IDE Bus.
I've tryed reading the hdparms linux command but all what it does is using the IOCTL API.
Is there any special sector to read from or a special command to the controller to access these parameters ?

Thank you.