Ah, I misunderstood.
What year, make and model is your computer?
I can't remember the year. Just bought actually. ASUS Zenbook 15
I suppose your secureboot (Windows only boot) is disabled?
So... we are right back to where we started. The Ubiquity installer is not seeing your HDD or any partitions.
The traceback shows this, as well. First file could not activate new on partition, second could not locate target partition and third, no partition to create.
In your screenshots, it shows you on /dev/sda
You may ask, "But it works on Windows." Windows uses the first available slot, no matter the size, to write and it will fragment however much is needed just to be able to write. Because of this, you can be using Windows on a HDD completely unaware of the fault up to the very moment it finally gives out completely with no apparent warning. Leaves you saying, "Nooo... but... but... my data..."
I would encourage you to boot into Windows and use the Windows Partition Manager to isolate and create a Partition just for Zorin. Format it to ext4, not to NTFS. Then boot your USB and see if you can see that parition and hopefully, it was made where there are good blocks.
Otherwise, again, my own sad opinion is that the HDD is on its last legs and ready to give out.
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Thanks for sticking with me on this!
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I'll give the partition-from-in-Windows a whirl. Question: When installing Zorin there, will I ever be able to get rid of the remaining Windows partition completely?
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HDD can't possibly be on last legs, can it?? It literally arrived, brand new in box, yesterday.
You have a Point...
All I can tell you is that the complete inability to see the HDD is most commonly due to the HDD failing.
There are many possibilities: HDD is fine. HDD was damaged in transit. HDD was not as new as advertised... I don't know and cannot be very effective on exploring that over a forum...
It is possible that there are other unusual or rare factors causing your HDD to shield itself behind a Romulan cloaking field.
Yes; if that is your goal you could do that now assuming the HDD is good. You can choose "Erase disk and install Zorin".
Where would I even find this "Erase Disk"option? I don't recall it being anywhere that I've seen...
Installation Type; it is the screen that looks like this:
Never seen that. I've got a Zorin 15.3 ISO. Am I wrong on this?
You definitely should be seeing that screen. Did you re-burn the USB with something other than Balena Etcher?
Yep. Used Rufus because the other one wasn't recognising my flash drive.
What are the specs of this HDD?
It looks like it's automatically selecting device dev/sda... which is one of your drives but not seeing the partitions. In the drop down box, what do you have for selection options? Can you see all of the devices if you choose Dev?
Did you check the md5 sum of your downloaded image?
Did you choose quick format, fat32 and uefi in rufus with dd write method?
In bios go to boot screen and change it that usb boots first (a bootable thumb drive must be in to make this change). Anytime a bootable usb is in your computer you'll boot into the thumb drive. If zorin is installed, change it to Ubuntu (how your computer recognizes it) instead of windows.
If you can see your partition(s) in the live cd, before you attempt to install, modify the drive so you have the windows partition and at least one (will be root) ext4 partition. Reboot, may want to check windows that you didn't break anything (more than possible if you ignored the recommended steps of hibernation and windows fast boot). Then into live image and install, should have the partitions available.
That it's showing nothing i'm wondering what is possibly wrong with your drive. While in windows, would you take a screenshot of your drive manager with the available partitions and sizes?
This looks very similar to what you have.
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Nothing at all in the drop down except dev/sda. It autoselects the only option.
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No idea what "check the md5 sum" is.
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Rufus: Quick format auto-checked by default and I didn't change it. FAT32 is default, didn't change. Target system = BIOS or UEFI (default and only option)... I don't see UEFI anywhere else on it.
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BIOS: yes, I changed it so that USB boots first.
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Zorin NOT installed. Only Windows. I'm attempting to replace Windows w/ Zorin.
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[quote="337harvey, post:27, topic:5299"]
If you can see your partition(s) in the live cd, before you attempt to install, modify the drive so you have the windows partition and at least one (will be root) ext4 partition. Reboot, may want to check windows that you didn't break anything (more than possible if you ignored the recommended steps of hibernation and windows fast boot). Then into live image and install, should have the partitions available.
[/quote]
Sorry... not really speaking my language here. What I can say is that I didn't ignore the fast boot step, but I haven't done anything other than what's in this tutorial: Before you install - Tutorials & Guides - Zorin Forum
- Attaching screenshot of disk management. The unallocated black one is the deleted partition I tried to make specifically for Zorin to install onto. It was created in exFAT because that and NTFS were the only options and I was told specifically NOT to do NTFS when following someone else's instructions on how to try to get a partition to show up when trying to install.
It does. Unfortunately the back-and-forth discussion there is punching way above my weight at this point in my Linux history. (Which is officially 1.5 days.) I can't really make heads or tails of it. I appreciate it though. 
NVMe KINGSTON OM8PCP3512F-AB (512GB I think.)