Cloning Disks with 1 or more Failing Head

Is there a way to find out how many physical heads are in a disk without opening the disk or using PC3000? Also is there a way to determine how many sectors are read with each head at a time?

I am working on a windows based program that is able to clone disks with a failed head, much like the Head Map does on Data Extractor, but am unsure if there is a way to automate the process more?

Thanks

On some drives you can tell by looking on the S/N.
For example, Maxtor Calypso S/N: Y42E7BHE0 has 4 heads,
Same thing on Seagate.
On IBM/Hitachi you can find number of heads in FW version.
Also, you can find info about heads number for each model on the manufacturer's website.

PS: I'm afraid you won't be able to make it, it's a very difficult task. You need to recreate translator subsystem for every model. Even DE doesn't know how to do that for some models.