And I decided to call HikVision USA - they were unable to retrieve my camera information after providing my serial number. Either I purchased a counterfeit camera from Amazon or more likely it was not from a 'authorized dealer'. This blew my mind as they wouldn't provide any more technical...
Update - Well its a 2TB drive and took the trash out and came back to see my first ever little red lines indicating recording in the 'Playback' tab. Not sure how long it will last but PROGRESS!
I don't even recall exactly when I purchased my US DS-2CD2042WD-I but I've been tinkering ever since. Many thanks to the above authors for taking the time to create a summary here and I especially liked the "since the information required to fix it was scattered across the entire Internet" part...