Deleted my Postgres container - what do?

[jthistle]

I'm stupid and deleted my Postgres database Docker container because I didn't realise Immich was using it.

How do I fix this? Can I just reinstall the Postgres container (if yes, how?) or have I irreversibly destroyed important data?

Cheers. Sorry.

[sueun-dev]

hey, you're totally fine here. deleting the container doesnt delete your data.

immich uses a bind mount for the postgres data (${DB_DATA_LOCATION} in your .env file), so the actual database files are sitting on your host filesystem, not inside the container. the container is just the runtime process, the data lives separately on disk.

to fix this just cd into your immich directory (wherever your docker-compose.yml and .env are) and run:

docker compose up -d

this will recreate all the containers including postgres, and it'll pick up the existing data from your DB_DATA_LOCATION directory automatically. everything should come back exactly as it was.

your photos/videos are also safe since those are stored at UPLOAD_LOCATION which is another bind mount on your host.

the only scenario where you'd actually lose data is if you also ran docker volume rm or manually deleted the directory that DB_DATA_LOCATION points to. but just removing the container via docker rm doesnt touch the filesystem.

lmk if it doesnt come back cleanly after that