I also joined about the same time. Officially before the Reddit changes. However I very much link myself with all other Reddit refugees. Reddit was and is a cesspool, the API changes were just the last shove.
To say that the influx of Reddit refugees has a negative effect is one thing, but to deny that you are not part of that change is just that, denial.
I recently decommissioned my old poweredge T620. Beast of a thing, 5U heavy af. It had 8x10T drives and was the primary media server.
Now that it is replaced I bought 2x Synology RS822+ and filled them with the old disks. Using SHR2. They are mixed brands bought at different times so I've made sure each NAS has a mix of disks.
Instances have a choice to enable a new Lemmy feature that will proxy all images through the local instance. Whilst your instance may not do that today it may do in the future. Or you could move to an instance that has this enabled. I don't know how to list instances with it enabled but it should be obvious by the URL used by images when viewed from an instance.
If you are the only user then use seafile pro. It's free for up to 3 users.