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  "path": "/t/photo-management/37702#post_1",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-07T13:51:09.000Z",
  "site": "https://discuss.privacyguides.net",
  "textContent": "I am moving away from the Apple ecosystem, but I still haven’t figured out a way to handle my photos. I used to have photos on my phone, my laptop, and an external drive for older photos, all handled by Apple Photos.\n\nI got rid of Apple Photos and am trying Immich. My problem is that Immich won’t start unless the hard drive containing the older photos is plugged in. Apple Photos could do this and just show a thumbnail if the picture was missing. So that means that I cannot look at my own photos unless I am at home with that backup hard drive (usually hidden for safety) plugged in. That’s a bummer.\n\nManually retrieving photos from my phone, I can deal with, but this is a bit of a deal-breaker and people at Immich seems to say that this is just the way it is designed.\n\nHow do you guys handle this? I do not plan to get a NAS and I do not want to have my photos constantly plugged into a home server. I also do not need remote access to any of the photos – it’s just that I want to check my current photos whenever I want.",
  "title": "Photo management"
}