How to merge hard drives without using Disk Utility?

Hi,
Disk Utility has no visible 'Partition' tab when I click on a hard drive, so I am wondering if there is a way to merge my hard drives without using it?
A possible reason for the Partition tab not being visible is that my MacBook was set up by adminstrators at my school, and perhaps they have locked the hard drive so I cannot merge them.
Is there any way to get around that?
Thanks!

Yes, you cannot Partition a Partition, even if it's just one Partition, you must Partition the whole disk, which may erase all your data... I forget which version of OSX it changed to allow resizing Partitions.

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