Just get a good portable SSD drive.

Ok back again, I guess I would summarize my question as
-WHERE to put everything in one central location
-with cloud storage being a question for later

Where do I keep them? A good software recommendation is needed. Would love it to included features like removing duplicates, easily organizing, tagging.

I am already looking at
Adobe Lightroom* annoyed Adobe has also gone to yearly subscriptions too - how do these all connect to Adobe Creative Cloud? More fees?
Adobe Bridge - I think this is just for moving across Adobe work, but it’s what we use at work
PaintShop Pro
FastStone

And more.

I am annoyed by monthly and annual fees. I don’t mind spending $$$, but I don’t want to think about it again or feel like I’m being held up just to keep my own photos.

I want to buy a really great digital photo gallery solution.
I want it to be able to hold tags, favorites, etc. A bonus would be duplicate identification. Great sorting and metadata organization.

Suggestions?

Alternatively, I could really lean into Google, Amazon, Microsoft, or Apple. And pay fees here and there for more storage.

Ideally, I just want to manage it on my own, with great software and internal/external hard drives. Maybe choose one other service^ for backup storage.

The built-in Windows feature doesn’t work as well as I want, and there again, Microsoft wants to charge me for storage once I reach a certain point.