its useless to update your hdinstall, its an debian system. and debian is the master if it's about upgrading. once you have installed debian (with knoppix, in this case) you essentially will never have to install debian again. debian offers smooth upgrades, even from major versions, even between several major versions. you can install packages from several major versions at a time, without problems, etc etc. so use this advantage, instead of whining about the new knoppix features