Does self-hosted backup actually match Google Photos 1:1?

What you are probably seeing

You scroll through your phone gallery and notice the local files are there, but the cloud version is compressed and stripped of metadata. You know the high-resolution originals live somewhere else, but you have no direct folder view or easy way to verify the backup integrity without opening the app.

You look at your storage metrics and see the free tier limit creeping closer. Every time you back up a large batch of family videos or RAW files, the process slows down or warns you about exceeding the quota, forcing you to choose between deleting content and paying a subscription.

Why it happens

Commercial cloud services treat photos as a product to be consumed through their interface, not raw data to be owned. They apply aggressive compression to save space and hide the underlying directory structure, which breaks the direct link you would have to the file system on a NAS or S3 bucket.

Self-hosted tools like Relica or Immich often focus on encryption and immutability rather than seamless user experience. They provide the security but may not automatically replicate the specific filtering, syncing, and deduplication workflows that make a cloud service feel like a simple folder on your desktop.

What changed recently

Step by step

1. Audit your current photo library by checking if the local files contain all metadata and unedited RAW data that the cloud service has altered or compressed.

2. Set up a dedicated folder on your NAS or object storage that acts as the immutable source of truth for your encrypted backups using a tool like rclone or restic.

3. Verify that your self-hosted application, such as Immich, indexes the new directory structure correctly so you can browse your photos without relying on the cloud provider’s viewer.

4. Test the restoration process by pulling a single encrypted file from your backup and decrypting it to ensure you can recover a specific image without the entire library.

5. Schedule a weekly sync job that pushes new local photos to your encrypted backup and compare the file counts to confirm every new item is captured locally.

Ways to go further

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