Zend certified PHP/Magento developer

Magento 2.3.4 images:resize massive inode count

on our site, many image links seemed to be broken, when you clicked on the image it did not show or showed a broken link even in the product grids, but when you refreshed the browser after trying to click on it.. it shows fine, like it had to be woken up. The admin page always worked and shows the image in the product.
To try to fix this we ran php -f bin/magento catalog:images:resize
but while it is STILL running it has blown the inode count through the roof.. to well over 500,000 can counting. This puts us WAY past our limit and we can’t afford to upgrade to a better hosting option.

What is the cause of this crazy inode count?
Can I reduce it in any way and still have the images show?

-Ken