Immich
A self-hosted photo and video platform with mobile apps and face recognition. It can index an existing folder of photos as an external library. The project itself advises keeping separate backups, so treat it as a viewer, not your only copy.
Photo storage server in Kenya
Your RAW files deserve a second home
A wedding photographer can bring home well over a hundred gigabytes from a single Saturday. Cards get reused, laptops fill and old drives fail quietly. A storage server keeps an off-site copy of every shoot and can host private galleries for your clients.
25 shoots
We suggest
Storage S2
KES 5,000/mo
Around 35 shoots comes to about 3.2 TB of 4 TB, about a busy year for a wedding photographer. The 8 GB RAM also runs Immich or PhotoPrism well.
Order Storage S2The second copy most photographers skip
Ask a group of photographers in Nairobi how they back up and most will describe the same routine: import to the laptop, copy to an external drive, format the cards for the next job. That leaves two copies in the same bag or the same studio, and both can disappear in one break-in.
The habit that protects a business is simple to state: keep at least two copies of every RAW file, in two different places. A storage server is the off-site copy. Each evening, or after each import, new files sync to the server automatically, and the external drive becomes your fast local copy rather than your only one.
Once the files are on your own server, it can do more than sit there. Self-hosted gallery software lets couples, brands and event organisers browse and download their photos through a private link, and clients who come back years later for prints or an album can still be served. The disks are SATA, which is right for large, mostly static collections; keep your Lightroom or Capture One catalogue and current jobs on your local SSD.
The problem
How photographers lose work
Cards formatted too early
Under deadline pressure, cards get formatted after a single copy to the laptop. If that laptop is stolen on the way home from a venue, the entire event is gone, and no apology to a couple replaces their wedding day.
Drives that fail quietly
External drives sitting on a shelf for years can develop bad sectors nobody notices until the day a client asks for an old shoot. Regular checks on a server surface problems while you still have another copy.
Galleries on someone else's terms
Gallery services raise prices, change compression or limit how long galleries stay online. Hosting your own gives you control of quality, branding and how long a client's photos remain available.
An archive you cannot browse
Thousands of folders named by date make it hard to find the shot a client remembers. Indexing software on the server lets you search by date, camera, place or even face, depending on the tool.
What runs on it
Photo tools you can self-host
With full root access you choose and install the software. These are popular, actively maintained options for photographers.
PhotoPrism
Indexes large photo collections, including many RAW formats, and lets you browse by date, location and label. It can treat your originals folder as read-only, which protects the archive from accidental edits.
Nextcloud
Share a folder of edited JPEGs with a client through a password-protected link with an expiry date. Clients download full-resolution files directly, and you can see when a link has been used.
rclone
Syncs your import folder to the server over SFTP, verifies copies with checksums using rclone check, and can encrypt files client-side with its crypt remote before upload.
restic
Creates encrypted, deduplicated snapshots of your catalogues and edit folders, so a corrupted Lightroom catalogue or an accidentally deleted shoot can be restored from yesterday or last month.
Sizing
How many shoots fit
Set the slider to the number of full event shoots you want to keep. We assume about 90 GB per shoot: roughly 3,000 RAW frames at about 30 MB each, plus edited exports, with around 20% of the disk free.
- 1–8 shoots Storage S1 Eight shoots at about 90 GB each is roughly 720 GB, which fits the 1 TB disk with headroom. Good for a part-time photographer or a curated archive of selects.
- 9–35 shoots Storage S2 Around 35 shoots comes to about 3.2 TB of 4 TB, about a busy year for a wedding photographer. The 8 GB RAM also runs Immich or PhotoPrism well.
- 36–70 shoots Storage S3 Seventy shoots at roughly 90 GB is about 6.3 TB on an 8 TB disk. Four cores speed up thumbnail and preview generation across a large library.
- 71–105 shoots Storage S4 Around 105 shoots uses about 9.5 TB of 12 TB, suitable for a small studio with several shooters keeping two or three years of work.
- 106+ shoots Storage S5 Up to about 140 full shoots fits 16 TB with headroom. Beyond that, keep only selects and exports for older years, or add a second server.
This is an estimate: high-resolution bodies, burst-heavy sports work and video clips can double the size of a shoot, while photographers who cull hard use much less.
Storage S1
KES 2,000/mo
- 1 core
- 2 GB RAM
- 1 TB SATA storage
- 2 TB transfer
Storage S2
KES 5,000/mo
- 2 cores
- 8 GB RAM
- 4 TB SATA storage
- 8 TB transfer
Storage S3
KES 7,000/mo
- 4 cores
- 16 GB RAM
- 8 TB SATA storage
- 16 TB transfer
Storage S4
KES 15,000/mo
- 6 cores
- 24 GB RAM
- 12 TB SATA storage
- 24 TB transfer
Storage S5
KES 20,000/mo
- 8 cores
- 32 GB RAM
- 16 TB SATA storage
- 32 TB transfer
Before you go live
Building a photo archive that lasts
0 of 8 done. Tick them off as you go.
Built for Kenya
For photographers working in Kenya
Upload at night, edit by day
Many studio and home connections upload far slower than they download. Check your upload speed, then let the day's import sync overnight so it does not slow client calls or online delivery. If power drops, rclone picks up from where it stopped.
Wedding season planning
Kenyan wedding and event bookings tend to bunch up in particular months. Start on a smaller plan during quiet periods and move up before the busy season, paying monthly by M-Pesa or card rather than buying another set of drives.
Clients' photos are personal data
Photos of identifiable people are personal data under the Data Protection Act, 2019. Keep galleries private by default, get consent before using images in your portfolio, and delete shoots you have no reason to keep.
Questions
Photography: your questions, answered
Is a storage server better than Google Drive or Dropbox for RAW files?
It depends on volume and control. Consumer cloud plans are convenient but price by terabyte and can change terms. A server gives you fixed monthly capacity, full control over folder structure and encryption, and the option to run your own gallery software. You do manage it yourself.
Can I run Lightroom directly from the server?
Keep your Lightroom or Capture One catalogue and current jobs on a local SSD. Catalogues are databases that work badly over network links. Use the server for finished shoots, RAW archives and backups of the catalogue itself, which restic or rclone can copy every night.
Should I use Immich or PhotoPrism?
Immich feels like a phone gallery app, with strong mobile backup and face grouping, and is well suited to family or team libraries. PhotoPrism is geared to indexing large existing collections, including RAW files. Both are free to self-host; try each on a copy of a few shoots before committing.
How do I send a couple their wedding photos from my server?
Upload the edited JPEGs to a folder, then share it through Nextcloud with a password and an expiry date, or create an album link in Immich. The couple downloads full-resolution files from your own server, with no third-party compression or branding.
How many copies of my photos should I keep?
At least two, in different places: for example, an external drive in the studio and the storage server. Many photographers add a third copy on another drive kept at home. The server should never be the only copy of anything you cannot afford to lose.
Does the server handle photo editing or processing?
It can generate previews, thumbnails and indexes for gallery software, which uses the processor and memory on your plan. It is not meant for editing; that stays on your workstation. Larger plans with more cores process big libraries noticeably faster.
Also on Storage Hosting
Backup storage for what you need to keep
Ready to host your photography?
Plans from KES 2,000 a month, paid by M-Pesa or card.
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