As Bob Dylan once said “Don’t think twice. It’s alright…” Now how in the world does that relate to what we do for you?
Have you ever called us about an image or tour we did for you? Did you ever find yourself searching for a image you lost? Chances are pretty much 100% we had it and were able to provide it for you. That’s a good thing by the way.
At Real Estate Imaging Service we pride ourselves on quality, value, detail and service. Some say we are obsessed with it. Others claim we are a bit “OCD’ed” about it. That OCD thing may be right.
Consider each photo shoot we do (we currently shoot at the rate of about 400 homes a year) produces from 1.5GB to 3GB of data. This data is comprised of from 50 to 100 RAW images and the processed image files (JPG & ZIP files) as well as the produced video files. Each photo shoot sits on our main system equipped with “Raid” storage (Raid storage uses multiple disk drives that hold multiple copies of your data). That main system is backed up on two additional “Raid” servers on our network. Yes that means we potentially have up to 5 or 6 copies of your data on three different systems and we could withstand multiple failures of computers, networks and disks and still come out with data intact.
Now do the math. It means we produce data at a rate of about 1 Terra Bite a year and we back that up several places. That’s Terra (trillions) Bytes of data storage needed every year. The typical agent might have a single hard drive on a laptop that holds less than 600GB of data and does not back it up at all. That’s a disaster waiting to happen.
Our data primarily consists of the RAW data images files. In order to better manage that data we will only hold the RAW files for 12 months in most cases but we will hold the “processed JPG files” (the ones we send to you) for a much longer time. That holding time period should be at least several years. Actually we still have all the files we ever produced. Fear not if you lose the images we have provided, we should still have them, barring a major disaster. We will be happy to provide them for you on request.
Regarding the on-line delivery of these images… Hosting services, including ours, limit the amount of storage they provide for you (typically 30GB). We store ZIPPED files of your processed images on our hosted web site. We will hold those processed files on line for instant delivery for 30 days. After that we will delete them as needed. We will host your video tours until the property is sold or you take it off the market. So please download your files and back them up in your own archives. Fear not though, if you should lose with any individual ZIP file or JPG image just ask us and we will either email you the file or reload the ZIP file on our hosted servers so you may download them again.
None of this is a guarantee or an implication or an offer to store these images beyond the first delivery we make to you. It is an explanation of the extraordinary efforts we go through each day to provide you with the best service and value possible. Remember what Bob Dylan once said “Don’t think twice. It’s alright…”
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