Hi so when i want to receive some btc my hardware wallet creates a new address. I can then send the btc to that new address. so my total btc is listed as a collection of received btc at different addresses. What i don't understand is, if my seed words unlock one address, how do all these generated addresses get restored if i lose my hardware wallet. Hope that makes sense!
No, your seed doesn't unlock just one address,it unlocks all the addresses. All those addresses you see in your wallet were generated from a single seed. Your hardware wallet - Trezor (from your recent posts) is a Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) wallet, meaning it generates its private keys and addresses from a single seed. For every new wallet you create, you get a new seed, which then has associated receiving addresses (some wallets also have distinguished change addresses) with their respective private keys.
I created a thread that can help you understand this better
HD wallet