a) The OP used our USB-SD Creator app which creatse a USB directly from the img.gz file - so there's absolutely no need for unzipping to get images and using Win32DiskImager or other tools.
b) You only wipe the HDD if you select the HDD as the install target. If you insert a formatted USB it can be selected and you preserve existing HDD content - which is what the OP was attempting.