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The container in this story is Immich, a self-hosted photo and video library. One family used it to bring two separate photo collections together on a home server, with separate accounts and selective sharing. That shows how the setup worked for them—not that Immich is a hands-off or feature-for-feature replacement for cloud services. Its own documentation warns against using it as the only place to store photos and videos.
What the family installed—and what changed
In a September 24, 2026 account for XDA Developers, João Carrasqueira described a household that had split its photo storage between Google Photos and OneDrive. The couple adopted Immich as a shared self-hosted service while keeping separate user accounts. They could share selected family photos and albums without merging everything into one account. Carrasqueira’s account is a personal report, not a controlled comparison.
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The author says the couple had separate paid storage arrangements, and that his OneDrive use was usually below 50 GB despite a 1 TB allowance. Those figures describe that household, not typical usage or a general measure of cloud-storage value. The article also acknowledges that Immich lacked some of Google Photos’ polish or features.
How Immich handles family libraries
Separate accounts and selective sharing
Immich supports shared albums with viewer and editor roles, as well as partner sharing for an entire library on the same instance. Its documentation explains the available sharing options; the XDA author’s use of separate accounts is a report about one family’s arrangement, not a requirement for every installation. See the official sharing guide for current behavior.
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Phone uploads and browsing
The author describes a familiar timeline, albums, slideshow, location display, optional face recognition, and automatic mobile backup. Immich’s onboarding documentation covers mobile backup and initial setup, but details can change as the project develops. Check the current Quick start guide for supported steps and settings rather than assuming that every cloud-app behavior is identical.
What self-hosting asks of you
Immich runs on equipment you or someone you designate operates. Docker Compose is the project’s recommended production deployment route, but installing the application is only one part of running a dependable library. You are responsible for the host, disks, updates, access, and recovery. The Docker Compose documentation provides the deployment instructions.
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Carrasqueira ran Immich on a mini PC with TrueNAS SCALE and one hard drive. He describes a storage-layout migration of roughly 100 GB that delayed an update on his setup. That is an example of configuration-specific maintenance, not a migration every Immich user must perform. A self-hosted service can provide control over where the library lives, but it also makes maintenance work part of the bargain.
Backups are essential, and they must cover two things
Immich’s Backup and Restore guide recommends a 3-2-1 strategy: maintain multiple copies, use more than one type of storage, and keep one copy off-site. Its warning is explicit: “Do not use it as the only way to store your photos and videos!”
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A complete backup needs both the uploaded photos and videos and the Immich database. The database contains file paths and user metadata; according to Immich, the application does not rebuild it by scanning the library folder. Built-in database backups therefore do not protect the media files themselves. A copy of the server’s photos alone is not a full backup either.
- Keep a copy of the media files outside the primary server.
- Back up the database as well as the media.
- Maintain an off-site copy so a local hardware failure or incident does not destroy every copy.
- Test that you can restore the files and database; a backup that cannot be restored is not a dependable recovery plan.
The family’s single-HDD server had no redundancy, so the author kept an off-site cloud backup. He reported paying under $2 during the heavy initial upload month and usually nearer $1 with more than 100 GB stored, while also backing up Nextcloud. Those are his reported bills in the September 24, 2026 article—not a current price quote or a prediction of what another household will pay.
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Keep an existing archive in place while you evaluate
If your photos already live in folders on a server or another storage system, Immich can scan an external library mounted into a Docker deployment. That can make an existing archive visible in the timeline without treating it as a newly uploaded, managed copy. The External Libraries guide describes how this works and notes that changes to external assets and their metadata have specific behavior. Read it before relying on Immich to manage or preserve edits to those files.
Before moving a family’s only copy, check that the existing archive is intact, understand how it will be imported or mounted, and confirm you have separate copies of both media and database data. A gradual trial with a small set of files can reveal workflow and access issues without making the whole family’s archive depend on an untested setup.
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- Purpose built for NAS enclosures, IronWolf delivers less wear and tear, little to no noise/vibration, no lags or down time, increased file-sharing performance, and much more
- Easily monitor the health of drives using the integrated IronWolf Health Management system and enjoy long-term reliability with 1M hours MTBF
- Three-year limited warranty protection plan included and three year Rescue Data Recovery Services included
Who should consider this arrangement?
Immich may suit households that want control over their own photo server, are comfortable maintaining it, and can provide reliable backups. It is a less natural fit for people who need a fully managed service and do not want to take responsibility for updates, storage, and recovery. The family story demonstrates one workable hybrid: Immich as the primary library, with a separate off-site backup still in place. It does not establish that every cloud service or account was abandoned for every purpose, or that Immich matches every Google Photos or OneDrive capability.
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