I am trying to allocate more space to a windows partition by shrinking a linux partition on the same drive, but there is an EFI partition in between the linux and window partitions. This is a picture of the drive setup as seen from windows. I've already shrunk the linux partition using gparted live and confirmed it still boots from grub. The drive in question is drive 1, which is where ubuntu 22.04 is installed. Windows is installed on drive 2.
From what I've read, the EFI partition is used by UEFI as part of the boot process, pointing it to os installations. I'm reluctant to do anything to it in case moving it would damage the computer's ability to boot, but I'd like to move it to the beginning or the end of the drive so I can extend the windows partition.
The strange thing about this is the fact that it appears that windows doesn't use UEFI, but ubuntu does. The drive the EFI partition is on was added around a year ago, and was probably generated when I installed linux in the linux partition. Because of this, the drive is actually visible to windows, lettered F: and has a directory ubuntu, but no corresponding windows directory. I would imagine if an EFI partition already existed, it would simply add new information there, but since it creates a new partition, it leads me to believe that I did not have one originally, which is corroborated by the fact that my windows installation lists legacy as the boot mode. This is strange because my motherboard has UEFI support, but was bought second hand, which may have something to do with it.
Is it safe to move an EFI partition within the same drive, and if so, would it be as simple as creating empty space somewhere, copying the partition over, and deleting the old one? If I were to break the partition somehow, would my windows computer even be affected, since it looks like it doesn't use UEFI anyway? Any help would be appreciated
