So I have a Lenovo IdeaPad z400 Touch running Windows 10 and want to dual boot it with linux (Ubuntu) for software development. Tonight, I've discovered that there are many large partitions which the system reports as empty. See here. My ideal goal is to shrink the Windows partition by ~180 GB, and repurpose the Lenovo (D:) partition for a total of about 200GB. I would create 2 partitions: one for Ubuntu and the other for user files.

With some internet searching, I've found out that probably 3 of these partitions are not really empty and actually a pretty important. I've noticed that the "empty" partitions could possibly be intentionally positioned where they are, immediately before and after the Windows partition.

Am I right in guessing that means that the 25 GB D-drive has to stay where it is?

Also, if I shrink the Windows partition and put the Linux partition in between like so and there's a failure, is there a chance that Windows recovery will look for boot/recovery files in the Linux partition in a manner like

recoveryPartition = windowsPartition   1

Is there any way of getting something close to my ideal scenario of this partitioning?

Edit: nonsense sentences because it's late and i'm tired.