Merge two drive partitions and preserve program data from each.

When I first installed Win 7 I partitioned my drive in two partitions, C & D. Win 7 is installed on drive C. I have installed some software programs from CD and downloads to drive both C & D in addition to data files on drive D. I wish to merge drives C & D and do am image backup before I upgrade to Win 8. I will install a new hard drive that I will clone to after installing Win 8 upgrade. Since I will have to do a clean install of Win 8 on the old drive anyway, is it a waste of time and effort to merge drive c & d on my old hard drive before I do the upgrade?

I would say it is a waste of time in some ways, because you should back up the data before trying any kind of partition merging.

Maybe I'm not understanding, but why do a clean install of Windows 8, and then clone it to the new drive? Why not disconnect the old drive, then install the new drive. Then, install Windows 8, and once that's finished, reconnect the old drive as your storage drive.

I have an upgrade version of Win 8 64 bit. I am upgrading from Win 7 32 bit to Win 8 64 bit. My old drive has some bad sectors and I want to avoid any drive failures in the future. Of course, I have an image backup of the drive containing both c & d partitions. I use Macrium back up software. I have EaseUS Partition Master Home Edition 9.2.1. When I merged the c & d partitions some of my programs would not open, so I had to create a new partition, rename it to D an copy all the files back to the D partition in order for my programs to work since the file paths were set to the D partition for some of my programs. I wanted to know if there is a way to merge the two partiltions and have all the programs functionable.

In the future install the programs to C to avoid problems since they become a part of the OS until uninstalled and should remain with it.

I would back up the data from D, Delete it in Disk mgmt and Extend C into the space.
Partition or Volume - Delete
Partition or Volume - Extend