Surely there is a better way to preformat?

[Tyrindor]

I just got into Applied Energistics, and it seems amazing. However there's a few problems I am having. Mainly it took me 3-4 hours to transfer all my items into the chests (before I learned about easier ways to do it). Now I am having an issue with items going to chests they don't belong. I read about preformatting, however it took me a good 10 minutes to do a single chest. Surely there is an easier way? Can't I just "format" it to accept only the currently existing items?

I have to:
1) Take out 1 of each item out of the ME chest and put it into a nearby diamond chest
2) Put the disk into a preformatter
3) Get the items out of the diamond chest and start putting them in the preformatter, one at a time (can't even shift click..)
4) Due to character inventory I need to setup a 2nd chest for items already added to the filter.
5) After everything is added to the preformat, I must then put the storage unit back in the chest and then (once again...) transfer all my items back to the chest.
6) Repeat for any items I want added to the preformat later.

I am surely missing something? This will take me hours.

Also is there a way to transfer ~91K of cobble/dirt to another storage device without transferring the other items?

 

[Darknesschaos]

There is a block that will dump everything from a disk into the network. Dire was using it recently in one of his videos. It makes pre-formatting easier.

 

[b0bst3r]

There is a block that will dump everything from a disk into the network. Dire was using it recently in one of his videos. It makes pre-formatting easier.

ME IO Port

 

[Tyrindor]

There is a block that will dump everything from a disk into the network. Dire was using it recently in one of his videos. It makes pre-formatting easier.

I just watched that video. He seems to think you need a new disk to preformat when you don't, so I don't see how the device really helps. You can preformat disks with already existing items and it won't erase them, you still have to transfer the items manually out of one disk, into the preformatter, then back into a chest or another storage type.

Maybe i'm missing something?

Why can't I just say "Hey.. preformatter, accept only the items that are already in this storage block!"

 

[DakkonB]

Why can't I just say "Hey.. preformatter, accept only the items that are already in this storage block!"

Because AE already does that by default, in a manner of speaking.
I'm pretty sure that if you have two non-formatted disks in two ME Chests, and one has Cobblestone and one does not, and you add Cobblestone into the system, that Cobblestone will prefer to go into the ME Chest that already has some Cobblestone in it rather than taking up a storage type in the other disk that did not previously have Cobblestone in it.

Now if you have 10 disks and each disk has some random amount of Cobblestone on it, then yeah you have a problem, but that's not AE's fault, that's likely your fault regarding how you loaded the items into your chests.

You could fix by preformatting a disk to hold only Cobblestone, place that disk into an ME IO Port and set it to extract all the items from the network. Only the Cobblestone will load onto that disk. Then set the ME IO Port to transfer the contents from the disk to the network, and all of that Cobblestone should go into a single ME Chest on your network. Now of course if you didn't preformat a destination for that Cobblestone, it's going to wind up in some random chest, but ALL the Cobblestone should wind up in there, assuming there is adequate space remaining on that disk.

Edit: Personally I'd recommend ditching the ME Chests and going with an ME Drive and an ME Access Terminal. Why click through multiple chests looking for items when you can open a single location and see everything you need? With enough disks in the ME Drive, you really don't need to worry about what goes on which disk, and you can let AE manage the storage itself.

 

[Lathanael]

Edit: Personally I'd recommend ditching the ME Chests and going with an ME Drive and an ME Access Terminal. Why click through multiple chests looking for items when you can open a single location and see everything you need? With enough disks in the ME Drive, you really don't need to worry about what goes on which disk, and you can let AE manage the storage itself.

Because the chests are kind of a "failsafe" mechanism. Keeping them powered is cheap and you can still access them in a somehow "normal" manner. You can ALSO have a ME Access Terminal alongside those chests (like dire did). No reason not to have both.

 

[Peppe]

Because the chests are kind of a "failsafe" mechanism. Keeping them powered is cheap and you can still access them in a somehow "normal" manner. You can ALSO have a ME Access Terminal alongside those chests (like dire did). No reason not to have both.

Chests use more power than drive racks.

Chest with no storage disk in it uses 1 unit of power. Chest with any disk in it used 3 units of power.

A empty drive uses 1 unit of power and each storage disk in it uses .5 - 2 units of power. Goes up .5 with each disk size so 1k, 4k, 16k, 64k = .5, 1, 1.5, 2 units of power per storage disk.


It takes little getting used to, but once you start using the AE crafting system you get used to not managing your stuff on a per chest basis and manage it all as a whole unit. Anything that has high volume you move to pre-formatted disks and I like to use a storage bus to send any extras out of the AE network. So useless stuff does not fill up unformatted disks (AE will always send something that is in the filter of a storage bus before sending it to unformatted disks). That bus could be to a deep storage unit or maybe an incinerator if the item isn't particularly valuable.

 

[KirinDave]

Because the chests are kind of a "failsafe" mechanism. Keeping them powered is cheap and you can still access them in a somehow "normal" manner. You can ALSO have a ME Access Terminal alongside those chests (like dire did). No reason not to have both.

You might want to keep a spare ME chest (leftover from your My First AE Setup), but in general ME chests are the least safe way to do it.

1. As Peppe mentioned, Chests are more expensive to run. By a longshot.
2. Chests spread out your stuff everywhere. This can be nice in some cases with preformatted cells, but it also means that a rogue creeper or a conniving gregtech machine has a much greater chance of destroying a valuable cell.
3. Chests are much more expensive to build as well.
4. The ME Storage bus is a lot better bang for your buck than an ME Chest if you wanna play it this way.