Refined Storage: How to transfer items on disks to external storage automatically?

[Greatsaga]

I'm playing Sky Factory 3, and have tons and tons of items. I've been putting most of the heavy hitters into quantum storage units, and have external storage setup on each of the units with high priority so that new items are always put into them.

My biggest issue is that there are so many items still in the storage disks that have now had quantum storage units setup and there doesn't seem to be any easy way to just transfer everything from the storage disks into the quantum storage units. I have a system setup right now where I have two external storage blocks connected to each quantum storage unit, one on insert, the other on extract. Each of them are connected to different cable lines, with the extraction cable line running into a relay. Whenever I want to clean out the drives or simply just view everything that is not in quantum storage units, I can turn the relay off. This way the system is still inputting items into the units, but I cannot see the items in the units on my network.

Once I turn off the relay, I can identity problem items and setup extraction through an interface or exporter. But, this method is time consuming and I have to individually setup exports on all items that I want to do this with. Additionally, while I am cleaning the system out, I cannot access the items in the quantum storage units, because if I turn the relay back on it will just be taking the items out of the units and putting them right back in on a never ending loop.

I would love if anyone had any ideas to make this operation cleaner. I would also like if someone had a solution to having my export switch, as I would like to go back to using only 1 external storage per quantum storage unit.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Actually... instead of inserting the items to be stored into your RS system, put them directly into your Quantum Storage Unit without hitting your network, then hooking the Quantum Storage Unit up to your network with a Storage Bus with high priority.

For example, your tree farm outputs saplings, logs, maybe apples. Instead of these things going into an Interface, they go into the relevant Quantum Storage Unit directly, local and on site, then hook up Storage Buses to them. Either way, it's roughly the same distance of cable, but much cleaner.

 

[Greatsaga]

That solution works if there is one source that is generating the items. However, I have multiple sources that all generate the same items. I could very well do this with some things, and I've thought about doing it for things like Mystical Agriculture Essences (example of something that can only be generated by one thing).
Inferium Essence and Supremium Essence is a good example of something that is generated by multiple things; I have an auto farm for all mobs, which all generate Inferium Essence, and then Withers and the Ender Dragon (both of which I have automated) generate Supremium. I could have these farms near each other, but then that kills my design.

Thank you for the thought, but I need to be able to put items directly into a refined storage system for them to be exported and sorted into their respective quantum storage units. If I do end up doing that for some items, then I will just use wireless receivers and transmitters in order to hook up to the network -- a lot cleaner.

 

[Greatsaga]

I ended up finding a rather convoluted method of achieving this. I setup an external storage bus on a chest with very high priority on a separate network, and then fed the contents of the chest into interfaces on my main RS network. Then, I took all my disks to the other network, put them into a disk manipulator and let all the items eventually feed back into my main network.

This essentially forced out most, if not all, the items that were still in the storage disks that needed to go into quantum storage units. I had a few problems with a few external storage buses that were improperly set to fluid mode for some reason, not sure how that happened. But nonetheless, this method worked.

 

[Reddis]

You could set up a method for deleting excess items. I mean do you really need 600,000 cobblestone and 80,000 sapplings?

 

[Greatsaga]

That's not the point. If I want to have that many items, it is my own choice to do so. And even so, a method to "delete" excess items would require that I export those items from the system... meaning interface slots for EVERY item I have in excess. Yeah, that's not practical.

I think I have decided to switch to AE2. I'm pretty sure I can get this working the way I want with its networks and channels system. I'll have to make SSD's (Super Soaryn Drives) with my quantum storage units... which is gonna take up a lot more space and be alot more complicated than my two external storage buses in RS... but at the very least there will be an open face for each unit where I can actually see the items inside. As long as the items are fed into my main network, and I have input/output to the SSD networks, then items should automatically go where they need to go. Even if I can't figure out how to get a redstone switch to turn on/off exporting, the only thing it would require is turning the storage bus that connects my main network to my SSD's to input only, I could additionally have a terminal beside my main one that connects only to the SSD network, and I can then essentially be able to see what items are in my main system that also have quantum storage units, and just re-import those items to the network.

If I was using a later version of RS, I'm pretty sure this kind of thing would be possible. I think the reader/writer blocks were something I was looking at, and was disappointed that they never made it into the 1.10 version of the mod. For all intents and purposes, I think RS is a better system, since it reduces the unnecessary complexity that AE2 has in some areas. But it just doesn't work the way I want it to in 1.10. Unless again, I'm missing something. That's what this thread was about, not about "what should I do with my excess items"

 

[Reddis]

Does refined storage not have a creative style drive or other retardedly large drive available like AE2's more drives?

BTW, I'm not criticizing your play style, I offered a solution to having "tons and tons of items" and "finding a rather convoluted method" of dealing with them. You also would not need to export anything to delete them, a person can set up a filtering system with a trash can before they are imported into the network.

 

[Greatsaga]

It might in later versions... the dev abandoned the 1.10 version. Biggest drives RS has in 1.10 are the 64k drives. RS wasn't built for storing a large amount of any specific item, it's mostly for consolidating everything in one giant network.