You should set up a local machine for Immich. I’ve got it running locally, with the photos on spinning rust and thumbs and db on NVME. It’s mind blowing how fast it is. Scroll to three years ago, lift the mouse button, and every thumb loads in a quarter second. Data intensive stuff is when you notice that the server is in the next room. It’ll pay for itself in a couple years. Treat yourself. :)

I thought about this, but I don't really trust maintaining spinning rust myself for something as "precious" as 15+ years of photos. I do have a desktop computer but it's running Windows 11 and I don't have it on 24/7. Live in a small apartment and definitely do NOT have the space anywhere for a dedicated server.

I like the idea of having everything hosted somewhere that's guaranteed to be up-and-running 24/7 using Debian with automatic full backups turned on. If I go on vacation somewhere and something goes wrong, I can easily SSH into it. If it was on my desktop and I was away and there was a power outage or something, I'd be out of luck.

It *is* a little slow but it's honestly fast enough. I was going to do periodic backups of the storage box to a local hard drive just in case, though.