how do you access the hard drive?

In the "Places" menu, there is "Computer", if you select it will show you all of the volumes on your system. Drag any of the items it shows onto your desktop to create the shortcut you wanted. Right click on any of them and select "Properties" to get their properties, including space used.

The menu item "Computer" can also be dragged onto your desktop to make a shortcut to it.

i did as you said but everything is unknown. i don't have a clue as to what space is left or anything like that.

Where you able to open the window which shows the disks/drives/volumes for your system? What does it show?

it shows the floppy, dvd drives(x2), and file system. i take it that the file system is the hard drive, so i clicked on it. the type is:desktop configuration file, size:unknown, location: computer, mime:application/x-desktop, modified: unknown, access: unknown.

Ok, I learned something. Under 7.10 (gutsy), this will show you the sizes. I checked 7.04 and it does not. I don't know of a point-and-click way for 7.04 or earlier, but you can use this terminal command to show the sizes of all file systems:

df -h

Look for "/" in the column "Mounted on" for the row to inspect. Assuming you are using one partition for your system, this is the information you want.

that didi the trick. thanks