I’m a professional photographer and graphic designer struggling to find an efficient way to view and organize my large photography archive. My collection is highly structured in folders, but I rarely browse it because it’s tucked away on external HDDs. I’m considering HexOS with Immich as a solution but have concerns about folder browsing, external access, and automation. Looking for advice on whether this is the right setup!
My photography is hyper-organized into folders, making it hard to browse casually. I use Adobe Bridge to tag exported JPEGs, but keeping them on external HDDs is inconvenient. I tried Google Photos, but its lack of nested albums makes it unusable for my large collection. I tested Plex Photos, but found it slow, buggy, and lacking proper tagging support. Considered Synology, but I don’t want overpriced, underpowered hardware.
I’m looking to replace my Windows 11 server running plex with a dedicated machine running HexOS. I don’t plan to run VMs—just Plex and Immich.
Photography File Structure:
Main Archive (outside of Immich):
Photography/Year/Event (e.g., London Trip)/JPEG/RAW/
Public Viewing (in Immich):
Photography/Year/Event (e.g., London Trip)/ (JPEGs only, duplicated from main archive)
RAWs stay in the main archive, while exported JPEGs are copied into Immich for easy viewing.
My Questions & Concerns:
Would HexOS be a good choice for this setup? (Plex + Immich)
Can Immich be accessed remotely? I’ve heard it doesn’t support external access out of the box.
Does HexOS have auto-sync options? If not, what’s the best way to automate file duplication?
How does Immich handle folders? I’d like to browse images in their logical folder structure, but I also want global search via tags. From what I understand, Immich doesn’t maintain strict folder navigation—how do users work around this?
Would love to hear feedback from anyone with experience using HexOS, Immich, or other solutions for organizing and viewing photography!
My understanding (not based on personal experience) of hexos is that it is functionally just a front-end for truenas, with further largely unspecified functionality coming soon*TM.
Just following the basic guides in the truenas documentation, I was able to get it up and running with a basic raidz1 pool and a share in an afternoon. I have not played with running other services on it, but IIRC hexos doesn’t help with that anyway, at least not yet. I would recommend at least trying yourself for free before paying a subscription to use a different skin and rout your configuration through their servers.
Unfortunately Immich was meant to be a drop-in replacement for Google Photos so its quirks would be similar.
I wanted to have your tiered directiry setup but unfortunately I just up. It sort of arranges itself by date anyway but editing/changing its date metadata ruins this order.
For the RAW photos, it can stay in the main TrueNAS/HexOS as a straight SMB share.
I use Tailscale for this, another TrueNAS App. Its speed depends on your internet connection chains and would run in the slowest speed of that chain. (For me, its very slow).
I haven’t checked HexOS but in TrueNAS there is ZFS replication, a block level replication (only uploads the bits on the file that actually changes). I use another machine for that as a backup (also with Mirrored drives).
There is a separate option for cloud backup but of course, it is a paid solution. There is a limit where it makes sense to do cloud backup, IIRC, past 12TB or so, it makes more sense to get another machine, preferrably an SBC (like Odroid H4 Plus) to do remote backup, also as a ZFS replication.
I dont really mess around with this anymore. I just sort of gave up and just sorted by dates. I understand that you may have a real professional need for this ut maybe someone else will answer.