Mike,
You are a good man. Thanks so much for the advice on risk vs reward. I, too, am quite adamant about backups in most cases. Fortunately, when this VM was a physical, the vendor had to go through the same process, so we have some robocopy experience with file permissions, etc.
Today we did the robocopy to the NAS, verified file protections copied, and proceeded with the VMDK delete (gulp), create new drive, boot up and robocopy file shares back to the VM. It worked fine, although I agree...pulling the trigger on the VMDK delete without a known valid clone is unnerving.
As always, thanks for the prompt and detailed help. Be sure to let me know if/when I wear out my welcome.
Thanks again,
jeff