Your photos are irreplaceable. While the internal SSD in your LocalNode is highly reliable, hardware failures can happen to any device. Setting up an automated backup to an external drive guarantees your memories are perfectly safe.
Overview
The 3-2-1 backup rule states you should have 3 copies of your data, on 2 different media, with 1 offsite. By backing up Immich to an external drive, you accomplish the first two steps. The LocalNode includes a built-in automated backup utility specifically for this purpose.
Step 1: Connecting the backup drive
You need a dedicated external USB hard drive. We recommend buying a cheap 2TB or 4TB drive specifically for this purpose and leaving it plugged in permanently.
Plug the external drive into one of the blue USB 3.0 ports on the back of your LocalNode.
💡 Tip: Ensure the external drive is at least as large as your LocalNode's internal drive (1TB) to ensure it has enough space to hold a complete copy of your library.
Step 2: Configuring the backup task
Log into your main LocalNode dashboard at http://localnode.local.
In the sidebar, click on Backup Manager.
Click the green Create Backup Task button.
Under "Source", select the Immich Library. This automatically selects both the raw photo files and the underlying database that holds your face tags and albums.
Under "Destination", select the external drive you mounted in Step 1 (e.g., /mnt/storage/ImmichBackup).
Reserved for a LocalNode product screenshot when available; UI layout may differ from third-party docs.
Step 3: Setting the backup schedule
You don't want to rely on remembering to click "Backup" manually. We will set this to run automatically.
In the Schedule section, select Daily.
Choose a time when you are asleep and the server is not busy (e.g., 03:00 AM).
Under Retention Policy, select "Keep last 7 backups". This ensures that if you accidentally delete a photo on Monday and don't notice until Thursday, you can still restore it from Sunday's backup.
Click Save & Enable.
⚠️ Warning: The backup only runs if the LocalNode is powered on. If you turn your LocalNode off at night to save power, you must schedule the backup for a time during the day.
To verify it works, you can click the "Run Now" button next to your new task. The very first backup will take a long time as it copies every single photo. Subsequent nightly backups will only take a few minutes, as they only copy the new photos you took that day (incremental backup).