First of all, no warranty on the harddrives?

Secondly, harddrives were always hit-or-miss. One bad sector at the top will ruin a harddrive for most people. What I'd suggest is investing in Spinrite (Disclaimer: I don't have any ties with Gibson Research or its affiliates). If you haven't tossed your harddrives out the window, you could try running Spinrite and it'll tell if you it can be saved. If it's just a single bad sector, it'll fix it and the rest of your harddrive is salvageable.

As for file format, you don't need any janky software to read HFS+ on Windows. If you already have an OSX install disc, install Bootcamp's drivers into Windows. This will allow Windows to read and write on HFS+. Best of all, the Bootcamp software doesn't need to running in order to do this; simply take it off your Startup items! Of course, this assumes that you don't expect to share your harddrive with other Windows users frequently.