For storing family photos (even tens of thousands of JPEGs) plus a Mealie recipe database, half a petabyte of NVMe is wildly overkill—and at $79 K, astronomically expensive. Here’s why:

1. How much space do you really need?
   • A typical photo runs 3–7 MB. Even if you snap 50,000 images, that’s under 350 GB.
   • Mealie’s entire database (recipes, thumbnails, metadata) rarely exceeds a few hundred megabytes.

2. A right‐sized solution
   • A simple 2–4 TB NAS (two 2 TB or 4 TB drives in RAID 1) gives you 1–2 TB of usable, fault-tolerant space—plenty for photos, videos and recipe data.
   • Drives cost under $100 each. A small ARM- or Intel-based NAS box runs $200–$400.

3. Don’t forget backups
   • Keep one copy locally and one off-site (cloud sync, an external drive in a safe deposit box, etc.).
   • Versioning or snapshots protect against accidental deletion or corruption.

In short: go with a modest NAS (2–4 TB mirrored) plus an off-site backup. Your family memories and Mealie recipes will be safe—without breaking the bank.
Link to Article