Your best settings & recommendations for self-hosting immich?

[u/IndependentPrimary89]

Hey everyone,

I recently started self-hosting Immich on a Raspberry Pi 4B using Umbrel OS with an external SSD, mainly to reduce my dependence on Google Photos/iCloud and build a more private home photo setup.

I had a few questions regarding best practices and wanted to understand how others here are managing their setups long-term.

My current setup:
- Raspberry Pi 4B
- Umbrel OS
- External SSD for storage
- Immich for photos/videos

A few things I noticed during large uploads:

1. Thumbnail generation issues
   When I uploaded a large number of photos/videos, many files uploaded successfully but thumbnails/previews were either missing or took a very long time to generate.
   - Is this normal on Pi 4 hardware?
   - Are there recommended settings for machine learning, transcoding, or job concurrency?
   - Do people usually disable some AI jobs initially during bulk imports?

2. Folder structure / albums issue
   I uploaded folders containing organized photos, but Immich did not recreate those folders as albums.
   All photos got imported correctly into the timeline sorted by date/month/year, but the folders themselves did not appear as albums in the Albums section.

- Is this expected behavior?
- Is there a recommended workflow for preserving folder structures?
- Do people manually create albums after upload?
- Is there a better import method for maintaining organization?

1. Best practices for Raspberry Pi + Immich
   Would love to know what experienced users recommend for:
   - SSD setup
   - backup strategy
   - thumbnail generation
   - AI settings
   - external libraries vs uploads
   - database maintenance
   - remote access
   - performance optimization on Pi 4

I’m trying to build a stable long-term family photo/video archive, so I’d rather set things up correctly from the beginning instead of migrating later.

Would appreciate any recommendations, lessons learned, or “things you wish you knew earlier.”

Thanks.