250GB hard drive only shows 232GB

Hidden Partition?

---EDIT---
Go to Folder Options, View, and Show hidden files and folders, There might be a Hard Drive Icon Called PARTITION (*

Even my 160 GB hard disk shows only 149 GB!

That's normal. Windows reports a drive as smaller than what it says on the sticker.
If you look in BIOS you'll see the full capacity.

The reason is that HDD manufacturers use 10^3 (1,000) to define 1 kilobyte - Windows use 2^10 (1,024).

Explanation:
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=9493781e73d5d010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD
http://seagate.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/seagate.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=336

hy eneles,
thanks for the good info, i learned a new thing today. till now i was telling my friends that the loss in the space was for the file structure info. but i was wrong and mis lead so many people.

once again thanks for the info......
i need to spread the word................