Copying data from 2 hard drives to new one

Got a question for you guys. Have a Windows 7 computer with two 500Gb data drives (just files, no OS) that I would like to "merge" into a new 2Tb drive but keep everything on one partition. I know I can clone the drives onto two separate partitions of my new drive, and then do a partition merge and resize to fill up all the free space. Or I can turn on view hidden and system files and simply drag & drop the contents of both drives to my new one. Which would be the better/easier/faster solution?

I personally just drag the files to the other drive, and then put the old one an antistatic bag (usually the bag the new drive came in) and put it in a drawer.

Thanks, I ended up using freeware program SyncBack to copy over both drives in one batch operation.