How to Move assets from immich to external library on syno NAS
I have setup immich on my synology NAS and quite happy with how it handles the library of images and videos. I have about 300GB uploaded into Immich folder (using the app and desktop access). However, my family wants to stick with synology photos as she likes the consistency and reliability of it. I have tried uploading 40GB images & videos using synology photos app and mapped it to immich external library and it seems to work well enough to show all the content.
I want to have all the content in one place so it will be easier to handle migrations and backup/restores. How can I move all current assets from Immich folder into synology photos folder without messing up the library setup/thumbnails etc and what will i lose in the process by just using external library ? (any features that are not available for external library ?)
11 Replies
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If this ticket can be closed you can use the /close command, and re-open it later if needed.I mapped the Photos dir into the immich library like:
/volume1/homes/user/Photos:/usr/src/app/upload/library/user
That only works if you upload through immich and start fresh, otherwise immich won't see any of the photos
@Krishna There aren't really any features unavailable for external libraries, but migration between the two is not supported, so you'll have to start fresh with any of the photos. Things lost when moving would be facial/person data, any immich edits in xmp sidecars, album data (unless you use storage templating and copy over the folders)
These are my mappings: volumes:
- ${UPLOAD_LOCATION}:/usr/src/app/upload:rw
- ${THUMB_LOCATION}:/usr/src/app/upload/thumbs:rw
- ${PROFILE_LOCATION}:/usr/src/app/upload/profile
- ${ENCODED_VIDEO_LOCATION}:/usr/src/app/upload/encoded-video
- /volume1/photo/uploadsDSM:/mnt/media/uploadsDSM:rw
- /volume1/photo/uploadsNC:/mnt/media/uploadsNC:rw
- /volume1/docker/immich/cache:/cache:rwThe original images you want are in UPLOAD_LOCATION/library
So I have to do the following steps:
- Move the assets from (UPLOAD_LOCATION=/volume1/photo/uploadsIM) to /volume1/photo/uploadsDSM
- I am already using storage template and you can see uploadsDSM is mapped to external Library
what happens to the thumbnails/database ?
The thumbnails will all have to be re generated
Is the external library added to the same user as the immich library? I’m not sure if there’s an easy way to remove just the internal files from immich without regenerating thumbs
yes. I can move those from within Synology File manager. But I want to understand what will break in immich and what I need to handle to break as minimum as possible. thumbnails can be regenerated, but what is the sequence ? Move library files, delete thumbnails folder at THUMB_LOCATION and wait for immich to do its thing and regenerate all thumbs for the photos moved into external lib ?
No, you can’t just move them out, at some point you’ll have to delete the files within immich or you’ll have duplicates
Would probably be easiest to start with a fresh immich install and all external libraries tbh
Or make a new user, copy the immich library to a new location, add the libraries to that and delete the old user
I have two users in immich.
- One is admin that has uploaded some images and owns/shares external library
- One more is common user used by all our family members to login to immich for uploading images, viewing/sharing albums. this user also has access to the external lib
I want to avoid starting fresh as much as possible. I am ok to lose albums/thumbnails and regenerate them. I have my current setup working with Authentik OIDC and dont want to mess with setting up new users etc
Then delete all images not in the external library, anything associated with them will be lost (copy them to a different location on disk first so they're not lost)
When adding them to the external library everything related to them will need to be regenerated within immich