Just curious why more people don't learn about and invest in home NAS's? Something like Synology would be pretty good at storing 8000 important photos. It is still a single point of failure, but its one I control.
It's a hassle to learn, admin, and it's more likely to eat your data. Many people do not have real internet connections at home so they could assign it an ip and access it remotely. Plus it's hard to buy a good one unless you go for generous overkill. And after 2 years you have yet another vendor abandoned Linux device with remote vulnerabilities on your home net.
Thanks for the point of view. I personally love the Synology at home and have a spare disk for cases where I may have a failure. I would say, barring something catastrophic, that I am set for another 3-5 years, which is fine. I would most likely buy a new model Synology 3 years from now and continue expansion. They also offer another disk shelf you can addon.
(I still prefer it to cloud storage though)