Best Hardware Drivers backup program

I have thought that it would be useful to back up drivers before, but I have not backed them all up, but have backed up some of them.
I usually organize my drivers disks that came with the hardware.
On OEM machines, I have most drivers on an external hard drive - but I wonder if these programs would be better or easier to use on both OEM and home built computers.
On a computer that you would build, I would think backing up the drivers would be very helpful.

While web surfing recently - I was looking at a My Favorites - software list, don't recall where - and I saw on the list a program called DriverMax.
As oft. I do - I looked for it on MajorGeeks, (for trustworthiness check) and other drivers backup programs as well.
I found the ones listed below on Major Geeks - along with others.
The ones below are Freeware - DriverMax prompts you to sign up by E-Mail after 30 days of use / or having it on your computer.

Major Geeks has tested Driver Collector on XP Pro - has anyone tested it on Vista?

Double Driver
Driver Collector
DriverMax

I would like to hear from any of you who have used these programs and others and what you think of them.


As always - Thanks for your input.

Chronk

 

The thing about driver backup programs, they save the driver in its installed state, meaning that there's no "setup.exe" file and you'll end up with a bunch of .DLL and .INF and .SYS type files. If you're not familiar or comfortable with the New Hardware Wizard and/or the Device Manager, these back up programs can be more trouble than they are worth. Personally, I have all my system drivers burned on a CDRW and I keep it stashed. I erase it 3-4 times a year and download and burn the newest drivers from the appropriate sites (there's a folder on this CDRW with web shortcuts to all my drivers download pages). I find this easiest. However, if you are comfortable and knowledgeable about the Hardware Wizard and Device Manager for drivers installs, then any of the driver back up tools should be fine. I've used DriverMax in the past, and it works great. Compatible with XP and Vista....
:-D

 

One thing I found with drivermax is that if you try to do a manual reinstall of a driver backed up with drivermax, Its been saved with a drivermax naming system and not with the original filename.

They still work fine, it just made it a little confusing trying to figure out which was which when manually reinstalling the hardware.

I don't know if this would cause any issues if trying to upgrade the drivers in future, but, some food for thought nonetheless.

 

:confused Hmmmm.... maybe it wasn't DriverMax that I used before LOL My memory is like old swiss cheese.... it stinks and is full of holes! roflmao

 

Thanks for the replies dlb and greasemonkey!

I downloaded Drivermax and backing them up was supe easy.
I will now need to burn to a disk - and if needed will see how difficult to re-install drivers. I am familiar with installing drivers by using hardware wizard -

I may see how difficult to re-install with the DriverMax's renaming scheme.
Appreciate your input. I can always resort to re-downloading and re-installing drivers, but hope DriverMax will help in the long run - of restoring drivers upon re-install - I recently re-installed Vista - so should not have to on my machine.
I may try DriverMax on someone else's machine, a customer or family member, when the time comes. Nothing I do that often, maybe 3 to 5 times a year.

Thanks,

Chronk

 

I finally had a chance to back up drivers and re-install them.
Re-installed Windows XP Pro on a Dell D620 Latitude Laptop.

I decided to take a safer route than just downloading one tool.
I am glad I did. I downloaded Double Driver and Driver Max, neither one of them
(maybe some end user issues?) were able to recover all of the drivers, but between the two, this was a successful way of recovering the drivers. Once all completed
Device Manager was all Happy! - no Triangles, !! or any ugly signs of unknown devices


DriverMax is a little cryptic, I was just patient, I could not tell which driver was for what in some cases, in some I was pretty sure, network device was labeled as such etc.
Some were like PCI device and a number, I clicked on that for every device I was not sure of, clicked on the subfolders, and OK, through Hardware Wizard, only 1 or 2 devices not installed, it said a file was missing, so I went to Double Drive 2.0 and
was able to recover the missing file from there.
I had another device, that Double Driver could not take care of, maybe I missed it in the list (possibly) as Double Drive gives you a choice of what to recover, I chose best as I could, but in the end, between the two of them, all was good.

Next time I need to back up - if I am still prepared on that computer, I will use both again.


Double Driver 2.10
http://majorgeeks.com/Double_Driver_d4802.html

DriverMax
http://majorgeeks.com/DriverMax_d5260.html

 

Both of the programs have the ability to choose what to back up and what to recover.
I mis-stated in the previous post.

:cool