Getting Lightroom to work (or not!) after a hard drive meltdown.

I have a 2015 iMac and ran Lightroon 6 or 7 on it for several years, but when the hard drive failed and I got a new one fitted the software refused to open. I tried all the online advice about changing permissions and all that but whatever I did I got the old error 16. So I took a deep breath and ordered Lightroom again signing up to pay every year which used to be the payment for the ownership of the app with no time limit. I launched the new app and soon found that it said the cloud storage was full and would I like to double the amount I'm paying to get more storage. The really stupid thing about the app ia that you can't store photos on the app alone, you have to have enough cloud storage too and as I'm already paying a hosting site to back up all my photos I don't want to have them stored a second time at far more cost. What I then found out was that I could download Lightroom classic which allows the same storage as the old lightroom apps and there's no cloud storage so that is what I am using now. All my old catalogs aren't recognised so I'm having to work out which photos I need to work on and load them up in batches. This is taking a matter of days! Very frustrating. I wonder how many other people are feeling a bit cheated in not being able to use their bought Lightroom app when they change their computer or the hard drive on their machine as in my case? Am I just really unlucky or is Adobe hooking masses of people into paying monthly?