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Is it possible to access drives on the guest systen from the host system? For example, my hosts system in UBuntu, my guest system in XP. XP is has three novell drives which I can't access from Ubuntu - is there a way I can access them from the host?

Yes. The VM is just like any other PC on your home network, but make sure that you select Bridged (or Host) Networking. See the relevant sections in the User Guide. You will need to configure the guest for file sharing of course.