Is there a way to move Windows partition on the same drive?

Question

I shrunk my Windows partition by ~30GB to make room for a Linux installation. At this point the 30GB of unallocated space was shown as one single block on Windows Disk Manager.

I installed ArchLinux, I think on the 18GB portion of the 30GB I freed up (on the below pic). Then deleted that partition and installed Ubuntu on it. This is what it looks like now:

Now I am at a loss here.

1. How did the 30 gigs that I freed up end up split into two in different sides of the Windows partition?

2. I want to allocate the unallocated space to the Ubuntu root partition which would require I move the Windows partitions first. But I cannot move the Microsoft Reserved (MSR) partition and apparently it is not safe to delete it since Windows really needs it to boot. Is there a way to do this without reinstalling Windows? The EFI was on the left of MSR but I was able to move it using GParted.

3. When I shrunk the Windows partition all of the unallocated space was on the "right" of C. If moving the MSR is impossible how did the 11 gigs get there?

As I understand it each block is a contiguous block of memory and if you need to move or extend it there must be unallocated space next to it. But again, how did the 11 gigs get there? The C and MSR must have moved to the right for this to happen...

Answer 1

The roughly 11 GBs including MSR probably is or once was a recovery partition although its "hidden" in Disk Manager.

Gparted could do this easily. It'll take a while but you can move the partition over to the beginning of the "unallocated" space.

Despite Microsoft recommending them I don't believe in super secret jujitsu partitions with no documentation or explanation. That might do absolutely nothing and never get used or cause nothing to work. Worst thing that could happen is you don't have a recovery partition you could never see or documented how to use anyway.