Immich Migration: Recovering Lost Albums After DB Restore

Experiencing issues during a database migration can be incredibly frustrating, especially when it leads to lost Immich albums – not your cherished photos, but the carefully curated collections you've built. We totally get it! Moving your self-hosted applications, like Immich, from one environment to another, say from a Portainer setup to a more isolated LXC container, often feels like navigating a minefield. The goal is always a seamless transition, preserving every single bit of your data, especially the organizational structure provided by albums. When you've put in the effort to back up your PostgreSQL database, follow all the steps, and then find those albums missing, it can feel like a significant setback. This article is here to help you understand why Immich albums might go missing after a PostgreSQL database restore and, more importantly, guide you through common pitfalls and troubleshooting steps to get your precious collections back, or prevent it from happening in the first place. We'll dive into the specifics of Immich database restore challenges, discuss the intricacies of PostgreSQL backups, and explore configuration nuances that can trip you up. Our aim is to provide practical, human-friendly advice so you can confidently manage your Immich instance and ensure your data integrity remains intact across migrations.

Unpacking the Immich Migration Challenge

Migrating a self-hosted application like Immich, particularly when moving between different containerization methods like from Portainer to an LXC environment, introduces a unique set of Immich migration challenges. It’s not just about copying files; it's about ensuring the entire ecosystem, especially the critical PostgreSQL database, transitions smoothly. When you're dealing with an application that manages thousands of personal memories, the stakes are incredibly high. The journey from one setup, perhaps a familiar Docker Compose stack within Portainer, to a new, optimized environment like an LXC with a community script, can often uncover unforeseen complexities. One of the primary hurdles often revolves around the database backup and restore process. While Immich provides documentation for this, real-world scenarios, with their unique system configurations and potential for minor missteps, can complicate matters. It's easy to assume a pg_dump and pg_restore will be a magic bullet, but factors such as different PostgreSQL versions, user permissions, or even subtle differences in environmental variables between the old and new systems can throw a wrench in the works. The initial setup might seem identical on paper, but the underlying OS, network configuration, and file paths can all contribute to headaches during migration. Users often face issues with data consistency, connection problems, or, as in the user's case, seemingly inexplicable data loss like missing albums, even when photos are present. Understanding that Immich's data model differentiates between raw assets (photos/videos) and metadata (albums, facial recognition, tags) is crucial here. While your media files might be stored externally and simply remounted, the relationships and structures defining your albums reside solely within the PostgreSQL database. Therefore, any hiccup in the database migration means direct impact on how your media is organized and presented. This section aims to demystify these Immich migration challenges, providing a clearer picture of why these seemingly simple moves can become quite intricate and emphasizing the importance of a meticulous, step-by-step approach to safeguard all your precious data.

The Database Restoration Quandary: Why Albums Vanish

When your Immich albums go missing after a database restore, it's a deeply concerning issue that points directly to potential problems within the PostgreSQL restore process. It's a common misconception that if your photos are still there, everything is fine. However, in Immich, photos and albums are distinct entities. Your actual media files (photos and videos) are stored on your file system, typically mounted into the Immich container. The database, on the other hand, holds all the critical metadata: information about each photo, who's in it, where it was taken, and, crucially, the definitions and relationships that make up your albums. So, while your IMMICH_MEDIA_LOCATION might be correctly mounted and your media assets are physically present, the database might not have correctly restored the entries that link those assets into your defined albums. This often stems from a few key areas during the PostgreSQL restore issues. One major culprit can be key constraint errors that occur during the pg_restore process. If the new database schema or the order of operations during the restore doesn't perfectly align with the old one, PostgreSQL might encounter issues when trying to re-establish relationships between tables. For example, if an album entry tries to reference a photo ID that hasn't been imported or correctly indexed yet, or if there are conflicts with existing primary keys, the restore might skip or partially fail certain sections of data, leading to incomplete album data. Another critical factor involves database user permissions. If the user performing the restore on the new database doesn't have the necessary privileges to create tables, insert data, or establish foreign key relationships, the restore will definitely run into trouble. It's often recommended to perform the restore on a fresh database – meaning an empty database instance, or one where Immich hasn't been initialized yet. This prevents potential conflicts with an existing schema or pre-populated data that might cause constraints to fail. If you try to restore into an already initialized Immich database, you're almost guaranteed to face errors because tables and data that Immich expects to be unique or fresh will already exist. The logs generated during the pg_restore command are your best friend here. Don't just look for a