You have excessive amounts of messages in the vmware.log file as shown in the example below and this is indicative of a failing HDD. I'd do as Darius has already recommend! 
vmx| I120: scsi0:0: Command READ(10) took 18.866 seconds (ok)
vmx| I120: scsi0:0: Command WRITE(10) took 4.724 seconds (ok)