gHacks technology news » backup drivers http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:55:11 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Device Driver Backup http://www.ghacks.net/2008/12/05/device-driver-backup/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/12/05/device-driver-backup/#comments Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:57:12 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=8724 Driver Backup 2 (via Download Squad) is a portable open source software that can be used to backup and restore the drivers of a computer system. The backup software automatically scans the computer system after start and displays the discovered devices and their drivers in a list divided into categories that look like they were taken from the computer hardware dialog of the Windows operating system.

The software application has a surprisingly small size of just 1 Megabyte and runs pretty solid and fast. After the initial scan of the system’s device drivers a backup can be initiated. It is up to the user to backup all device drivers or only the drivers that have been selected. The backup software provides filters to display only OEM or third party drivers as well as only those drivers that have been digitally signed or are fully portable.

The device drivers can be stored on the computer’s hard drive using custom descriptions, filenames, path formats and device path formats. The device drivers will be stored in separate device folders by default. Each folder contains the drivers of that device. This can be a single .inf file or dozens of files that are needed for the device.

Once a device driver backup has been created it can be used to restore that set of drivers on the computer system. You can either restore a single device driver by installing the driver from the directory it was saved in or all device drivers from withing the device driver backup software.

device driver backup

Backup and restoration of backed up device drivers is a quick and easy process which makes Device Driver 2 a perfect companion for a USB device with enough storage space to store the drivers.

The device driver backup software comes with a few command line parameters to automate the backup and restoration process further. There is also a command line builder which is currently only available in Italian language. It should however be relatively easy to use it to create the parameters needed for the desired operation.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/12/05/device-driver-backup/feed/ 15 Driver Max 3.0 http://www.ghacks.net/2007/09/26/driver-max-30/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/09/26/driver-max-30/#comments Wed, 26 Sep 2007 10:17:56 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/09/26/driver-max-30/ A new version of Driver Max has been released just recently.Driver Max is a software to backup all your Windows system drivers to be able to import them again at a later date. The user may select the drivers that he would like to backup in case it is only some of them that he would like to have a backup of.

Once the backup of the drivers has been created it can be imported again at any time using Driver Max again. This is great if you have to reinstall your system because you could update all drivers in one go with just one restart required afterwards.

Another application would be in companies that use the same type of hardware on many of their computers. They could use Driver Max to update all of their computers with the latest drivers speeding up the process.

driver max

The ‘Check for Driver Updates’ function did not seem to work properly though. Nothing happened after clicking the button that is supposed to check if updates for my drivers exist. It could be that none exist but a short message that this is the case would be appropriate and less confusing for the user.

driver max

Read More:

Driver Max 3

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/09/26/driver-max-30/feed/ 8 Use Driver Grabber to copy drivers in Windows http://www.ghacks.net/2007/07/11/use-driver-grabber-to-copy-drivers-in-windows/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/07/11/use-driver-grabber-to-copy-drivers-in-windows/#comments Wed, 11 Jul 2007 11:14:53 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/07/11/use-driver-grabber-to-copy-drivers-in-windows/ Driver Grabber is a small application for Microsoft Windows operating systems which grabs all device drivers except drivers from Microsoft and saves them in the same directory where Drive Grabber was executed from. This can be extremely useful but the application is mainly geared towards techies and not casual users.

This is great for instance if your hard drive crashes and you have to install your operating system again. Instead of downloading all the drivers again you can simply use the saved ones by Driver Grabber. It could also be useful to analyze drivers for instance.

driver grabber

Using Driver Grabber is really easy. Just download and unpack the files to any location on your hard drive and execute the only .exe file from that directory. Driver Grabber will automatically begin to scan your pc and save all drivers that it can find in a directory named drivers in the same directory.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/07/11/use-driver-grabber-to-copy-drivers-in-windows/feed/ 4 Import and Export all Windows Drivers http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/25/import-and-export-all-windows-drivers/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/25/import-and-export-all-windows-drivers/#comments Wed, 25 Apr 2007 21:27:20 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/25/import-and-export-all-windows-drivers/ If you ever reinstalled Microsoft Windows you surely have encountered the following hassle. All the drivers that have been installed on your system are gone because of the new installation and you have to search the web to find the latest drivers and update your system with them. This is of course only valid if you do a clean install and do not install the operating system in the same folder as the old.

Driver Max is a free software for Microsoft Windows that is able to export all drivers from the system and import them at a later stage. It should be noted that you will have to request a free registration key from the developers to use Driver Max for more than 30 days. I would suggest to use either a throw-away email address or one that you do not rely on.

Using Driver Max can’t be easier. There are actually only three buttons that have a functionality that is important for the process of backing up all drivers and importing them again. The first button is called Export Drivers and will load a wizard that guides you through the process. You may select all or only some drivers, choose which drivers are displayed using the settings button and finally select a folder where Driver Max should save the drivers to. The drivers can be compressed which seems useful to me.

The import button installs all the exported drivers back to the system which is very convenient if you have to reinstall your system. The last button is called Display Report which scans the system for drivers and displays them in a list. You can export the list as html or text. This is a great way to analyze driver related problems.

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