Gizmo's Freeware Reviews: Best Free Windows Driver Backup and Restore

15 March 2012
by Anupam

Introduction

Drivers are an important part of the system. They act as intermediaries between the system, and the hardware devices. They interpret the signals, and facilitate communication between the system and the devices. Without drivers, the devices won't work at all, or won't work properly.

Generally, the drivers come on a CD/DVD, with the hardware devices. As an alternative, they can also be downloaded from the manufacturer's site, and that's the best place to download the drivers, or their newer versions.

But, sometimes, the CDs can get misplaced, or lost, or the drivers might not be available from even the manufacturer's site, because they might have stopped providing support for the hardware. In such cases, the driver backup software are like a boon. These software back up the installed drivers for different devices, and even the drivers that come with Windows.

If you have an old system, and do not have a CD, or cannot get drivers from anywhere, it would be a good idea to backup all the installed drivers on the system, including the Windows drivers. Or, even if you have the CD, or the drivers, I will still recommend backing up the drivers, and storing them at a safe place, just in case. Its always better to be on the safe side.

I will also suggest backing up drivers using more than one software, so that if one program is not successful in restoring them, or misses some drivers, the other ones may still be able to do the job.

In this review, I have tried to cover programs which have the ability to backup drivers, and restore them. Some of them do not have the ability to restore, but still do a good job with the backup, and therefore, have been included. Restoring drivers manually, can be a bit tricky, so I have given preference to the programs which apart from backing up, can also restore the drivers from that backup.

Some of these software also have the ability to update the drivers, but I have not covered that in the review. This review is purely based on the abilities of the programs to backup and restore the drivers, and not updating them. As said earlier, the best place to download new versions of the drivers is from the manufacturer's site.

Not all software listed below have the ability to create a list, or a report of drivers installed on the system. If you want a list of drivers installed on the system, you can use the excellent small utility called DriverView from Nirsoft.

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