My VM file has become unreadable due to corruption on my hard drive. The file itself is about 56GB is there anyway to try and save some of my files from my Windows 7 VM or "unzip" my windows7.vmdk file? Currently I able able to boot into the Mac OS and see the .vmdk file but am unable to move or transfer the file to my new hard drive. Also, I'm not sure how much this matters but I'm running an older version, VMware Fusion v. 5.0.5. and the error message I'm getting is ~The operation on file "/Windows 7.vmdk" failed.
You can try mounting it to the Mac, or adding it to another VM as a secondary drive, but success will depend on the specific corruption.
Mounting a virtual disk as a Mac OS volume
Attaching an existing virtual disk as a second hard disk in Fusion
VMWare Fusion dropped support for that feature in V4.
Check out http://www.paragon-software.com/home/vd-mounter-mac-free/
It is by Paragon and is free