determining Hard disk serial number

hello friends,
i m very much confused regarding serial number of a harddisk. All i want is to retrieve harddisk unique serial number. I got decent solution regarding volume serial number, but i dont want that coz every time a fat table has been modified , this volume identification is also vulnerable to change.
mainly i want to fetch harddisk serial number using windows mode of programming. i dont desire any realtime dos mode solution. Tell me about some techniqes if you have, about this part.
thank you in advance.