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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.
Discussion
Double Driver has a simple interface, and the program itself is very easy to use. Its noteable feature is that it can backup drivers from even an offline system. This is very useful in cases, where a system is unable to boot, for some reason. This feature, apart from others, gives it an edge over the other software. The only other software to have this feature in the category is DriverBackup!. For backup, by default, non-Windows drivers are selected in the list. Options are available to invert this selection, to select all, or select none. Users may also select individual drivers of their choice, if they want. Drivers can be backed-up to structured folders(default option), as a compressed folder, or to a single self extract file. For the last option though, Double Driver crashed, when I tried to use it. Its a bug.
One other good thing about Double Driver is that it was able to back up drivers for devices which were not connected to the system at that time. My webcam was not connected, but even then, it backed up the driver files for that.
Restoration is also easy. Select the driver backup location, the folder where they were backed up previously, and it shows the list of drivers which can be restored. Again, options are available to choose which drivers to restore. The restoration process is quite fast too, and I will say its reliable.
Double Driver has the option to save the list of drivers in a text file. Option to print the list is also there. This feature is quite useful, to see which drivers have been installed on the system. The list is quite informational, providing name, version number, date, hardware ID etc.
Overall, Double Driver is simple, and very reliable, with some good features, making it the top choice in the category.
SlimDrivers has a modern and attractive user interface, which is quite appealing. For backup and restoration, it provides a driver list, which is very similar to the list seen in Device Manager. SlimDrivers is a gold certified partner of Microsoft, so I think that was expected. However, SlimDrivers does not have the option to select non-Windows drivers, or third party drivers, which can be seen as a slight disadvantage by some, who want that feature. Individual drivers can be selected, or deselected though, based on the requirement. One other thing I find as a disadvantage, is that SlimDrivers stores the drivers in folders with names based on generic, or hardware IDs of drivers. If SlimDrivers itself is used to restore the drivers, then that is not a problem. But, if for some reason, SlimDrivers is not used for restoration, then it can be a problem figuring out the drivers for the corresponding devices.
SlimDrivers was not able to backup the drivers for the devices that were not connected to the system at that time.
At the time of restoration of drivers, I ran across a few errors. However, after the process was over, I found that drivers had been restored successfully. But still, errors are a possibility, and therefore, reliability can be a concern.
One point to mention is that in the Options, make sure to select the same folder for both Backup, and Restore, otherwise, the list of drivers does not appear in the Restore section, because of which, you won't be able to select individual drivers, and will have to restore all of them.
By default, SlimDrivers is selected to run at Windows startup. Users will want to deselect that in the Options. Also, when installed, and run for first time, SlimDrivers will open its home page in the browser. It does not happen for subsequent runs of the program though.
SlimDrivers also has the habit of sitting in the tray, even if you close it. To exit the program fully, it has to be exited from the system tray. I find that an unnecessary feature.
For backup and restoration, SlimDrivers does quite a fair job, and works as it should.
DriverMax presents a wizard for backup and restoration, which makes it easy to use, and may appeal to users who prefer wizard based step-by-step process. DriverMax also has some options which are quite good. Although, DriverMax does not present the option to select or deselect non-Windows drivers visibly, but the option is there in the Settings. There are other useful options in the Settings, like the ability to select hidden devices, which do not get displayed in Device Manager, or to select phantom devices, which were connected earlier, but have been removed. It also has the option to select only the current version of the drivers, in case more than one version is installed, or select all the versions. DriverMax has the useful feature of saving the list of installed drivers to an HTML, or a text file.
But, while DriverMax has these good things, there are some bad things too. Between operations, like displaying driver list, or after saving Settings, or even canceling the Settings etc, there is some amount of delay which is very annoying. Maybe the delay occurs, because it prepares the results in a presentable way, but this acts against it. The delay is also not small, its around 10 seconds, which when occurs during most of the operations in the program, is highly annoying.
After the immediate installation too, DriverMax indexes the drivers, which is again unnecessary according to me, and at the same time presents an unnecessary delay. None of the other programs in the category have such a behavior.
For backup, although DriverMax stores the drivers in different folders named according to device types, but inside them, it segregates the folders by hardware IDs, which again, can be a problem if you decide to install drivers manually.
Restoration is very slow, and if you had backed up all installed drivers on system, including the Windows drivers, and you want to restore all of them, then be prepared to start the restore process, and go for a long walk. I restored all drivers, and it took 3 hours(!) to restore them back, which is many many times more than what other software took. Only thing I can say is that all drivers were restored without problem, and it can be said reliable.
Had it not been for the annoying delays and ultra slow restoration, this program would have got a higher ranking.
DriverBackup! has the ability to backup, and restore drivers, but unfortunately, the restore feature did not work for me, for unknown reason. This is disappointing, as I had high hopes with this software, because it has some really good features. DriverBackup! is the only other software in this category, to have the feature of backing up drivers from an offline system, which can be a life saver. For backup, DriverBackup! is very good, providing some useful options. When started, it presents a clearly laid out list of drivers, with all installed drivers selected by default. However, if one wants to choose only Windows drivers, or only third party drivers, they can be easily chosen, with just the click of buttons, Oem, and Third parts, respectively, on the interface. The selection can be further refined by selecting drivers with full portability(according to DriverBackup!), or drivers with digital signatures, again by pressing the respective buttons on the interface. Drivers are backed up individually in folders, according to device names. The program also generates a .bki file unique to the program, which contains information on the backed up drivers. This file is used at the time of restoration, to present the list of drivers from the backup folders. Again, the selection of drivers can be refined at the time of restoration too.
DriverBackup! was able to backup drivers for phantom devices, that is, devices which had been connected earlier to the system, but not at that time. Very useful.
The program has a very good help file, explaining how to perform different operations. The program can be used from the command line too.
Although, the program is portable, but it cannot be considered fully portable, because from version 2 onwards, it required the use of .NET 2.0, which if not present on the computer, the program won't work. I consider this as a disadvantage. Versions earlier to 2.0 do not require .NET, but they do not have the option to restore drivers.
Still, feature wise, this program is quite good, and if only it did not fail in restoring drivers, and did not require .NET, it would be a brilliant program.
This program is in active development, and I hope that the future versions will address the shortcomings.
Driver Magician Lite does not have the feature to restore the drivers, but it performs the task of taking backup of the installed drivers very well. It presents a neat list of installed drivers, with the third party drivers(that is, drivers not contained in Windows by default), shown in red, making it easier to distinguish them. Users can select these drivers, or, they can select individual ones, or select all, depending on requirement. The backup is done in nicely structured folders with clear device names, which makes it quite easy for manual installation of the drivers for corresponding devices.
DriverGrabber is a very simple software. In fact, it is way too simple. There are no options whatsoever, by which program can be configured. Once the program is started, it just starts to backup drivers, showing what it is grabbing on a small screen. And although, it shows its grabbing different drivers, but by default, it backs up only the non-Windows drivers in its own directory, in separate folders. Once it backs up drivers, the program just closes itself. That's it. The program is portable, and there is a .ini file, which can be edited, in case one wants to back up the Windows drivers too. In that case, the .ini file has to be edited, and the "Skip" word has to be removed in front of fields under the Provider, and the Name sections.
The author has stopped its development, and their main website is presently show to be under construction. The program may be obtained from their forum, which is up and running.
I have included it here, because although, its too simple, and does not have any noteable features, but still, if you want a program, that will back up the non-Windows drivers without much fuss, then this is the one.
The program may or may not work on Windows 7, there is no official word about it. People have reported that it works on Vista. Same for 64-bit systems, it may or may not work. If one cares to read their forum, some workaround has been posted for making it work on 64-bit systems. Still, rather than doing that, there are other better options mentioned above.
Other Programs
These are other programs which have not been reviewed in the article. But, I am listing them here, in case anyone comes across them, and wonders about their abilities.
- Driver Collector Does not have a website anymore, and the program is not in development. There are no options to configure the program. There is no option to back up the drivers in batch mode. Instead, individual drivers have to be selected and backed up manually. This defeats the purpose of having a software to make things easier.
- Backup Drivers Requires Java. Does not work as intended. It just backs up the whole Windows directory, which is really not how it should be done. Not recommended at all.
