On the Knoppix menu there are options to create a persistent home directory and also save configuration. After I completed the hard drive installation it only offers to create the directory and save the configuration to a floppy instaed of the hard drive. Why?

Does the directory even need to be created after completion of install to a hard drive?
Those options remain even after you install Knoppix to hard disk. But, obviously, after you've installed Knoppix, you have a persistent home directory, and your configuration is saved. So you no longer have to use those options! Just ignore them.

If you're curious about what they do, you can read through the scripts they point to, /usr/sbin/mkpersistenthome and /usr/sbin/saveconfig.