[Discuss] multiple floppy folders in /mnt

[Murray Strome]

When I did "df -k",  in addition to the normal expected stuff on my hard 
drives, I got a long list of the form:

df: `/mnt/floppy-<NN>': Input/output error

When I look at /mnt there are a bunch of folders called "floppy-<NN>" 
where NN goes from 2 to 55. If I look inside the folders, each has an 
empty file named ".created-by-hal"

I have never seen this before. I have done a Google search for 
".created-by-hal" and found some references on hal or hal, but cannot 
claim to understand what it is all about. If I look at my packages 
installed, hal is there, and says it is a Hardware Abstraction Layer.  I 
cannot find anything to tell me just what it does, whether I need it or 
not, and certainly not how to remove all those things in /mnt.  Just a 
guess -- I suspect that HAL created one of these whenever I tried to 
look at a new floppy.  I don't think I ever had this before, and don't 
really know how I installed it (unless something else I installed uses 
it).  Can I safely remove this package, or should I?

Thanks.

Murray