Download the driver backup program. Backing up drivers in Windows

Few people think that someday their computer will crash and they will have to reinstall the entire system. The reinstallation itself no longer causes such problems as before, but installing the driver can be a stumbling block, especially if the driver disk is lost and the Internet does not work for the same reason that there is no network card driver. In this case, a driver backup would be very helpful.

How to backup your drivers

There are many ways to create such backups, but we are interested in the simplest and free one.

Therefore, we will use the free version of the program DriverMax. Go to the official website of the DriverMax program and click on the big green button.

We start the installation of the program by double-clicking with the left mouse button on its icon.

In the first window, click on the button “ Launch».

A window with an installation scale will appear and after a few seconds the program itself will open.

We are only interested in driver backup, so we will not be distracted by its other functions, but will immediately go to the “ tab Backup».

Set the switch to the line “ Create a driver backup archive" and below click the button " Further».

If you are not a completely confident computer user, then first it is better to create a system restore point, and only then start archiving drivers. It never hurts to be on the safe side. It does not take a lot of time. Literally in a minute you will have a system restore point created, which in case of any problems can easily return everything to normal.

After creating a system restore point, first go to some other tab, and then return to the “Backup” tab again, and set the switch to the “Create a driver backup archive” entry.

In the next window, at the very bottom, check the box to select all our drivers, and click the “ Backup».

The process of copying your drivers will begin. Be patient and wait.

After the program has finished creating a copy of your drivers, you need to go to the folder using the link at the bottom of the window

Under no circumstances should you leave the driver archive only in this folder, because... it is created on the disk with the operating system. And if at one point your system does not start and you have to reinstall it, then you may lose this archive.

Also store the program installation file there, because after reinstalling the system you most likely will not have access to the Internet.

This is why I don't store all my files on the same drive as the operating system.

For this purpose, I have 5 hard drives on my computer and some of them are divided into partitions. Therefore, I am not afraid that my system may “fly”. I have a copy of the operating system on a separate disk and a backup copy of it.

I advise you not to wait for the system to tell you to live long, and take care of this in advance. Then, in case of unforeseen situations, you can quickly and painlessly restore everything.

How to restore drivers on a new operating system

It's as simple as creating a driver archive. Install the DriverMax program on the new OS and select the “ Recovery" There, go to “Restore from a previously created backup” and click the “Next” button.

In the next window, click the button “ Download».

And specify the path to the driver archive and click the “ Open»

In the next window, put a checkmark at the very bottom and click the “ Restore».

And in a few minutes all drivers will be installed.

Almost all experienced users have at least once encountered the need to reinstall . If you often install and uninstall programs, download all sorts of things and surf the Internet all day long, then, in the end, this will lead to littering of the file system, failures, errors, freezes, in a word, all those unpleasant consequences that the user decides to get rid of for the reinstallation procedure.

In principle, there is nothing difficult in reinstalling Windows itself; reinstalling drivers can be much more difficult, especially if the disk with “native” drivers that came with the computer (usually a laptop) was lost or was missing altogether.

In such cases, it may help you to back up your drivers. Immediately before reinstalling Windows (or better yet, before), you will need to create a complete backup of all drivers and save it to portable media or a user partition.

To create such a backup, you can use the Free Driver Backup program. Free Driver Backup is a simple, free application for backing up drivers. The application has two scanning modes: search for recommended drivers and search for all drivers.

Free Driver Backup will also give you the opportunity to find out detailed information about installed drivers, such as version, name, release date, developer company, number of files, etc. Working with the program is easy and simple.

Once launched, Free Driver Backup will scan your system and present a complete list of all installed drivers, after which you can select the necessary components from the list. To start the backup process, click the Backup button. Copies of drivers are saved in the directory located at C:/Program Files/Free Driver Backup/BackUp.

In this case, each driver is assigned a separate folder. You cannot set your own path for saving backups in Free Driver Backup; they can only be copied manually.

It is also done manually - there are no means of automating recovery in the program.

Additional features of the utility include backup of cookies, IE settings (home page) and system registry. Oddly enough, but in the case of backing up the latter, the user can still choose the directory to save.

Good afternoon to everyone and everything.

Today we will talk about a small but very practical utility from the series “Small spool - but expensive” (c). A program called Double Driver revives previously installed drivers and, in the event of reinstalling the operating system, allows the user to put everything in its place in a couple of clicks.

So, meet the hero of the occasion, Double Driver - your defense tool against, excuse the slang, all sorts of unexpected people. As you remember, we taught you how to install any drivers quickly and conveniently - " " - now it's time to learn how to save these drivers and quickly restore them.

Let's get started.

Double Driver - saving drivers and quickly restoring them from backup

Nowadays, almost any computer user is faced with the need to reinstall the operating system. The reason for this may be the consequences of a viral attack or a “blue” screen, aka. It’s good if the matter is limited to banal treatment of malware or resuscitation using safe mode, but what if you need to format the disk and install the operating system from scratch? After all, the process of “driving” the system will inevitably follow, and for this, the fact is, you will need a “native” disk, of which there has been no trace for a long time :). What to do then?

One reasonable solution is to make a backup in advance using the Double Driver program and then easily and easily restore the drivers on the new system.

So, the developers tell us the following capabilities of their utility:

• View a list of already installed drivers;
• Creating and restoring our, as they say, “firewood” from a backup copy;
• Save and Print the entire list of drivers.

Note:
A distinctive feature of the software is the ability to create backup copies of drivers even for a disabled (second additional OS) system.

Of course, this does not come with all sorts of bells and whistles, but still, she knows her job quite well. Among other joys, we can note the micro-size, freeness and support for a non-Russian interface (yes, everything is in English). Of course, the first thing you need to do is download this miracle of programmer thought. This can be done directly, i.e. by downloading from the site where you are now.

After downloading the program archive, unpack it, and then double-click on it with the left button and run the file called “dd.exe”. You will see the ascetic interface of the program. Press the button “Backup” (1) and then “Scan Current System” (see image).

The program instantly gives us a list of all the drivers installed in the system, and all we have to do is select the required ones (or all of them), click “BackupNow" and select the location (folder) for storing our.. “firewood” (see image).

Note:
In the parameters (output) you can choose how to present the created driver database: structured in a folder, compressed or self-extracting archive.

Next, the process of saving a backup copy of the drivers begins, which proceeds quite quickly, however.. It all depends on the number of the list of drivers being created. Then you can go to the specified address in Explorer and make sure that the program created and structured everything correctly (see image).

The next step is to take and move the created folder with drivers (you can save it as an archive) to removable media (flash drive), and copy the program distribution package there.

Now, when the “dark day” comes, i.e. it will be necessary to reinstall the system and reinstall the drivers (or simply solve some problems with them), we simply launch the program from removable media, click the “ Restore" button and specify the archive with the drivers on the flash drive (see image).

This way, all our drivers will remain safe and sound during the next failure, which will save us a lot of nerves. The program has the ability to save a list of drivers to a text file ("Save" tab) so that you can view their versions, update dates and hardware IDs.

Among the “highlights” of the program is the ability to create backups of drivers, so to speak, of a broken operating system. Just imagine a situation where the main operating system does not allow you to boot from it, but the user plans to rearrange it, however, here’s the problem - the device drivers are lost and remain in the faulty system, and there is nowhere to reinstall them, or there is no desire, or there is no Internet, or something... then something else... That's when the same Double Driver comes to the rescue, where you just need to boot from any boot loader and, specifying the location of the disabled OS, save the drivers installed in it.

Actually, that’s the end of the review, and whoever listened – well done :). In general, of course, the program largely duplicates manual copying, but there are still a number of convenient advantages in speed and other nuances, described to some extent above.

Afterword

Another useful software has been disassembled. I hope that it will be useful to you one day in your household and will save you a lot of quiet and free minutes, and also, importantly, your nerves.

As always, we will be glad to have any questions, additions, and everything else. Write comments!

P.S. Thanks to team member 25 KADR for the existence of this article

Driver discs from a recently purchased motherboard or video card tend to disappear at the most inopportune moment.

And such a moment comes, most often when restoring the system or setting it up from scratch, when disks with drivers are simply necessary.

Of course, to download drivers for your motherboard, you can visit the manufacturer’s website, go to the “support” section and download the latest version. But nothing may come of it, because the network adapter also needs the driver that was on the lost disk.

You can make a backup copy of the driver CD to your hard drive in advance, but this will not help if the entire hard drive fails and not individual logical drives.

Moreover, the "drivers" directory is often sent to the trash - it is large, but 3-4 drivers are needed.

The author tried a couple of times to store system drivers on a flash drive, but with the same ending. In general, data safety is a hot topic, and you will like another useful backup program - Cobian Backup.

May your system live happily ever after, but if you had to restore everything from scratch, use the small Double Driver program in advance. Tested: it’s better to spend a few minutes on it, and in case of problems with the operating system, it will save you a lot of time and nerves.

Double Driver - backup and restore drivers

This program is nothing more than a tool for working with drivers installed on the system. In a very short period of time - no more than a minute - it is capable of analyzing installed drivers, creating a list of them and making a backup copy.

Double Driver is easy to use and easy to operate, which is not hindered even by the lack of Russian and Ukrainian languages. Even an inexperienced user will be able to cope with the program.

The program interface is clear and functional: Double Driver has a toolbar with a set of functional buttons. So you don’t have to look for the “right button” among the array of windows.

In addition, all the tools are arranged in order, according to the frequency of their use.

To scan the system, you need to select the "Backup" tool and click the "Scan Current System" button.

Then we select the drivers that we want to add to our backup.

By analyzing the available system drivers, Double Driver displays a full report on each of them - manufacturer, installation time, etc.

The analysis result can be printed using the "Print" tool.

As already mentioned, the program is characterized by high performance, while it consumes few resources and the overall performance of the PC does not drop during operation.

By creating a backup database, Double Driver takes care of user convenience: copied files are not thrown into one directory - they are distributed across directories that are named identically to the names of the devices.

Needless to say that the saved backup copy takes up many times less space on the flash drive than a copy of the entire disk?

It is not known why, but the developer added one detail to the program: during operation, you can configure the display mode of both all system drivers as a whole, and the display mode of drivers exclusively from Microsoft.

To restore, you need to use the "Restore" tool and click the "Locate Backup" button. You will be given the option to select a backup to restore.

When restoring a set of drivers, the program also shows its best side - just like when creating a copy, it takes very little time, no more than a minute.

Good day!

I think many users have encountered the installation of one driver or another; even the new Windows 7, 8, 8.1 operating systems are not always able to independently recognize the device and select a driver for it. Therefore, sometimes you have to download drivers from various sites and install them from CD/DVD disks that come with new equipment. Overall, this takes a fair amount of time.

In order not to spend this time searching and installing every time, you can make a backup copy of the drivers, and if something happens, quickly restore it. For example, many people often have to reinstall Windows due to various bugs and glitches - why look for drivers again every time? Or let’s say you bought a computer or laptop in a store, but it didn’t come with a driver disk (which, by the way, often happens). In order not to look for them in case of problems with Windows OS, you can make a backup copy in advance. This is exactly what we will talk about in this article...

Important!

1) It is best to make a backup copy of the drivers immediately after setting up and installing all the equipment - i.e. when everything works well.

2) To create a backup copy, you will need a special program (more on this below) and preferably a flash drive or disk. By the way, you can save a copy to another partition of your hard drive, for example, if Windows is installed on the “C” drive, then it is better to place the copy on the “D” drive.

3) You need to restore drivers from a copy to the same version of Windows OS from which you made it. For example, if you made a copy in Windows 7, then restore from the copy in Windows 7. If you changed the OS from Windows 7 to Windows 8, and then restore the drivers, some of them may not work correctly!

Programs for creating a backup copy of drivers in Windows OS

In general, there are quite a lot of programs of this kind. In this article I would like to focus on the best of their kind (in my humble opinion, of course). By the way, all these programs, in addition to creating a backup copy, allow you to find and update drivers for all computer devices (more on this in this article:).

1. Slim Drivers

One of the best programs for working with drivers. Allows you to search, update, make backups, and restore from them almost any drivers for any devices. This program's driver database is huge! Actually, I’ll show you how to make a copy of the drivers and restore from it.

http://www.boozet.org/dd.htm

A small free utility for creating driver backups. Many users use this one, personally, I haven’t used it that often (a couple of times over the entire period). Although I admit that it may be better than Slim Drivers.

A very good program that allows you to easily and quickly create and restore drivers from a copy. The only thing is that this program has a smaller driver base than Slim Driver (this is useful when updating drivers, but does not affect when creating backup copies).

Creating a backup copy of drivers - instructions for working in Slim Drivers

Important! Slim Drivers requires an Internet connection to work (if your Internet does not work before installing the drivers, then, for example, when reinstalling Windows, problems may arise when restoring drivers - it will be impossible to install the Slim Drivers program to restore drivers. This is such a vicious circle).

1. To create a backup in Slim Driver, you first need to configure the location on your hard drive where the copy will be saved. To do this, go to the Options section, select the Backup subsection, specify the location of the copy on your hard drive (it is advisable to select a partition other than the one where you have Windows installed) and click the Save button.

3. Literally in a matter of minutes (on my laptop in 2-3 minutes) a copy of the drivers is created. The successful creation report can be seen in the screenshot below.

Restoring drivers from a backup copy

After reinstalling Windows or unsuccessfully updating drivers, they can be easily restored from our copy.

1. To do this, go to the Options section, then to the Restore subsection, select the location on your hard drive where the copies are stored (see just above in the article, you need to select the folder in which we created the copy), and click the Save button.

3. The program will warn you that you will need to restart your computer to restore it. Before rebooting, save all documents so that some of the data is not lost.

That's all for today. By the way, many users praise the Driver Genius program. I tested this program, it allows you to add almost all the drivers on your PC to a backup copy, plus it will compress them and place them in an automatic installer. Only during recovery, errors are often observed: either the program was not registered and therefore only 2-3 drivers can be restored, or the installation is interrupted halfway... It is possible that only I was so lucky.

Happy everyone!