When building a virtual machine using LSI disk controller you need to use a floppy image (in Windows XP at least).
Get the 32-bit driver here or here
Extract the zip file to /tmp/lsi
Do the following terminal-fu:
mkdir /tmp/floppy mkfs.msdos -C /tmp/floppyimagefile.flp 1440 sudo mount -o loop /tmp/floppyimagefile.flp /tmp/floppy sudo cp /tmp/lsi/* /tmp/floppy cd sudo umount /tmp/floppy cp /tmp/floppyimage.flp ~
You should now have the floppy image file called “floppyimagefile.flp” in you home directory.
Upload this file to your VMware storage and mount it on your floppy of the virtual machine.
Boot up the virtual machine and make it boot on the XP install CD. During the first blue screen (not BSOD!) press F6 (it also says to do so in the bottom of the screen). It will then look for the driver floppy and find our driver and thus enable it to find the disk.
If you don't want to play with terminal-fu and just want the driver floppy and get going (or running Windows and don't have access to the tools required 
), here is a pre-cooked floppy image: lsi.flp.zip
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