I needed extra storage so I added a mSata PCIeX1 controller card with a 256GB mSata SSD. It uses the Marvell 88SE91xx driver and chipset. I also tried another controller but it was the same chipset on a virtually identical controller card and had the same results.
The SSD is a Plextor M5M PX-256M5M mSATA 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive.
The guest seems to work fine and doesn't crash but eventually I get an error after shutting down and am unable to merge the snapshot. When I restart the following is displayed:
The disk "J:\GP2013\SVR2008R2X64-000001.vmdk" has internal consistency errors that might be caused by partial corruption of the disk file. It is recommended that you restore a backup of this virtual machine. If you do not have a backup, VMware Workstation can repair the disk, but there is a possibility that the data on the disk may be corrupt and affect the stability of the guest.
2013-08-23T14:30:52.724-06:00| Worker#0| I120+ Do you wish to repair the disk and continue?
This doesn't always happen but eventually it does. There aren't any chkdisk errors in the image after the repair runs but the snapshot can't be merged. I cloned the guest to another standard sata SSD and there aren't any problems. The same thing happens with different images on this and another controller with the same chipset. There are no message in my PC event log. I'm using Windows 7 x64.
So - for some reason VMWare Workstation 9 has issues with this controller.
In the log I see a great many of these:
2013-08-23T14:30:52.545-06:00| Worker#0| I120: DISK: OPEN scsi0:0 'J:\GP2013\SVR2008R2X64-000001.vmdk' persistent R[]
2013-08-23T14:30:52.588-06:00| Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-SPARSECHK: [J:\GP2013\SVR2008R2X64-000001.vmdk] GT Error (ZG): GT[547][286] = 0 / 4234112
2013-08-23T14:30:52.588-06:00| Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-SPARSECHK: [J:\GP2013\SVR2008R2X64-000001.vmdk] Resolving GT[547][286] = 4234112
2013-08-23T14:30:52.588-06:00| Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-SPARSECHK: [J:\GP2013\SVR2008R2X64-000001.vmdk] GT Error (ZG): GT[547][287] = 0 / 4234240
2013-08-23T14:30:52.588-06:00| Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-SPARSECHK: [J:\GP2013\SVR2008R2X64-000001.vmdk] Resolving GT[547][287] = 4234240
2013-08-23T14:30:52.588-06:00| Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-SPARSECHK: [J:\GP2013\SVR2008R2X64-000001.vmdk] GT Error (ZG): GT[547][288] = 0 / 4234368
2013-08-23T14:30:52.588-06:00| Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-SPARSECHK: [J:\GP2013\SVR2008R2X64-000001.vmdk] Resolving GT[547][288] = 4234368
Followed by several of these:
2013-08-23T14:30:52.637-06:00| Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-SPARSECHK: [J:\GP2013\SVR2008R2X64-000001.vmdk] Grain #14386 @1851776 is orphaned.
2013-08-23T14:30:52.637-06:00| Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-SPARSECHK: [J:\GP2013\SVR2008R2X64-000001.vmdk] Grain #14387 @1851904 is orphaned.
2013-08-23T14:30:52.638-06:00| Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-SPARSECHK: [J:\GP2013\SVR2008R2X64-000001.vmdk] Grain #14388 @1852032 is orphaned.
I'd report this to vmware but don't have a support contract.