How to Build an Automatic Storage System: Easy Organization

You’ve probably already built some sort of storage system in Minecraft, but you always have to find the right chest and correctly assign your items. Over time, this can take quite a while, and if you haven’t labeled the chests correctly, it gets complicated and confusing. That’s why it’s worth building an automatic storage system, where you only need to put your items into one chest. These will then be automatically sorted into the correct chests.

Building it isn’t that difficult, but it will cost you some resources. The good news is that the design can be infinitely large, so you can build a huge warehouse! With our step-by-step guide, you’ll learn all the basics.

When is a storage system worth it?

A large and complex storage system is especially worth it for blocks you have a lot of. This includes cobblestone, dirt, various types of wood, and other building blocks. It’s less useful for valuable resources like diamonds, but if you have several stacks of them, you can use it for that too.

Keep in mind that this system only sorts one type of block or item into a chest. The item filter that ensures blocks are correctly sorted only works this way. So, you’ll need a lot of chests to fill the storage.

You also need some space, as the mechanism for the automatic sorter takes up several blocks. Besides a long double chest, you need at least 5 blocks of space behind it.

What do you need to build it?

As mentioned, building it isn’t cheap. You’ll mainly need a lot of hoppers! And for that, you’ll need a lot of iron. Either go mining or build an iron farm with villagers, which also works automatically. We have a guide for that too (How to Build an Iron Farm: Unlimited Supply of Iron) . Our iron farm from the tutorial has produced several stacks of iron, which you can use for the hoppers.

Wood for enough chests is also necessary, both for storage and for the chest in the hopper recipe.

Now come the redstone components. You’ll need redstone dust, redstone torches, and both repeaters and comparators. Make sure you have enough regular stone and quartz for the comparators.

Step-by-step guide for automatic storage system

We’ll go through the entire process in two sections. First, we’ll show you the basic mechanism and then how you can expand it to a larger storage. But first, it’s important that you understand how items can be sorted in Minecraft. Our accompanying images will hopefully help you implement the sorter.

Sorting mechanism explained simply!

1. Start the mechanism with a double chest where the items will later be directed. Behind it, place a hopper leading into the chest. As mentioned in the introduction, you need 5 more blocks of space behind it. Place a block behind and below the hopper and attach a redstone torch to it. Behind this, place a repeater in another gap. This should point to the block with the torch.

2. After laying the first row of redstone, now comes the second level. Place 3 blocks of building material behind the hopper. Now the comparator comes into play. Place it from the front on the block behind the hopper. The two prongs should be at the front. Then lay three more redstone dust behind it.

3. Now you need to install the item sorter. Attach another hopper in front of the comparator with a shift-click. This causes the comparator to compare items in the hopper and ensures that only certain things land in the chest. To set this up, you need to install a sort of filter. Use a block of your choice that can stack up to 64. Place one in each of the last four slots of the hopper in front of the comparator.

In the first slot of the hopper, place the material you want to sort into the chest below. You’ll need at least 42 blocks because 41 will stay in the hopper to make the comparator work. This design is more suited for a large storage. The 41 is because the redstone signal is balanced and doesn’t overlap with neighboring chests.

But with that, you already understand the basic principle for your storage system! Although the initial setup is a bit tricky, it’s actually easy to understand and implement. The important thing is that the filter works.

Expanding the storage space

1. This automatic sorting system can be expanded infinitely. You just need enough hoppers and redstone, but you can simply build the design in a row. As described above, thanks to the filter, the redstone signals don’t overlap. Each filter works with 4 individual filter items and the 41 chest items.

2. Lastly, you need to build a storage chest where you can later unload your inventory. A chest at the end of the row of hoppers is the start. All items that can’t be sorted will land there. Above it, you need to build another row of hoppers, all pointing into each other. On the last hopper, place the chest, which will distribute the items into all the hoppers.

Now the system is complete! You can mark the respective chests, for example with frames or signs. This way, you can later distinguish them better.

You can then expand your warehouse as you like. Hide the redstone behind a wall, for example, so you only see the chests. But here you can let your creativity run free again. The items will then be sorted in the background, and you won’t have to worry about it anymore.

Conclusion

If you ever have too many items and blocks, it’s worth setting up an automatic storage system. While it will cost you some resources, especially iron and redstone, in the long run, it’s absolutely worth it! The best part of the design is that you can expand it infinitely. The more items you have, the larger you can make your storage. Manage your resources more efficiently with an automatic storage system on your own server. Rent your Minecraft server and keep track of all your treasures! Together with friends, such a warehouse can also be easily built if everyone gathers the necessary resources.