BCsven

Yep

Yes

That part I haven't read up on

Breaking changes are scary for running solutions. it is why IT has a mandate of "Never touch a running system" (security patches only)

Immich is a younger, quickly evolving project, so new features or improvements may justify breaking the upgrade path. There may be folks that share data migration tips when that happens. It is why in corporate world we never want to be on the latest version of something; let the non critical data users find the problems.

Also you may have seen this on the project page. Basically use at own risk until things mature:

⚠️ The project is under very active development. Expect bugs and changes. Do not use it as the only way to store your photos and videos!

Nice

As an example in an engineering software it had been forward compatible for 30 years, recently they changed the datatypes for certain expressions: some expressions that could be number type now were restricted to integer. This broke every formula built off of that expression type in legacy data. ugg

I haven't reviewed the changelog for this immich, but yes a breaking change typically means if you just went and updated you would have a broken system. sometimes something like you mentioned if a backend database is changed or db column attributes altered.

Not what you asked for but also a helpful gui like output cli tool for folder sizes.

https://github.com/KSXGitHub/parallel-disk-usage

Those are good for sure. And maybe it was testdisk. There was one that just undeleted the partition table delete. as long as new data had not been written everthing would be intact

Unlesa you did a full zeroing format the info might still be available. There was an applicarion that attempts to rebuild the partition / Filesystem from left over meta data or inode info. I forget the name unfortunately. Normall the strings command will get your photos but probably not if they were in a docker image database.

Started with OpenSUSE because it supported our Proprietary CAD software ( Choice was Redhat or SUSE ) As a bonus nVidia hosts its own repo for SUSE and OpenSUSE so no graphic issues with CAD. Then Arch because of the buzz. Manjaro EndeavorOS Ubuntu PoP!_OS Clear Linux Mint ElementaryOS Fedora NixOS

Now main machines run OpenSUSE and wifes 12 yr old laptop is NixOS.

Why? OpenSUSE is really dependable and updates are flawless, if i tinker and break something a rollback at boot is a quick fix, which is imortant since it is my daily work work-station. While you could set up btrfs and grub snapshots in other systems, I like that it comes baked in, and all the EFI/ TPM / Secure-boot stuff works with no messing around.

As for wife's machine , she is not tech savvy and Windows was too complicated for her (and so damn slow), so GNOME on NixOS (fast) is a clear workflow; and since she likes things exactly the same in order to comprehend a system , the config files make it easy to re-replicate the exact setup.

gparted can be installed and run as app on the system, it will give you a good sense of what the partitions are and how they are labeled and flagged. The disk tool (like GnomeDisks) should be reporting the same. if you get differing results it can sometimes be partition was flagged amd removed but the underying data is there and getting picked up by whichever tool is scanning the disk.

Might be power. i had a 3.5 HDD external USB adapter with separate power plug. It would drop out under sustained use. Fix was providing higher amp power supply

If a user does not like CLI or is not comfortable fixing anything, then suggest OpenSUSE. Built in snapper rollback for problems and YAST2-GTK GUI apps to configure anything, no CLI skills needed.

A mess.