virtualbox.org

is it possible to extract files from my virtual hard drive? if so how?

If you mean copy the files off to the Mac OS X host, then yes, and the easiest way would be to set up a shared folder and copy the files to that folder. Then they would be accessible to both the guest and the host.

well yes i do mean that, but you cant copy the system files from that guest os wile it is running so that wont work

The way to get around that would be to create another guest, and then using that guest mount the virtual hard drive of the guest you want to copy files from as a secondary drive.