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There are several reasons why you should back up installed drivers on your Windows 10 Pro 64-bit computer. Perhaps you want to reinstall Windows 10 Pro 64-bit and don't want to download drivers again, or maybe the drivers for your devices are no longer available, not reliably sourced, or your internet connection speed isn't fast enough to download drivers that are hundreds of megabytes in size.
Downloading drivers is easier nowadays, but to avoid the situation where device drivers are not available for download from reliable sources, it's best to create a backup of the existing drivers on your device and store that backup in a secure location.
Speaking of driver backups, there are numerous tools and utilities available to support driver backups, such as DriverEasy software and many others. Backing up drivers using DriverEasy is quite straightforward. Most third-party programs work without causing any issues, but why resort to third-party programs when you can easily back up drivers on Windows 10 using PowerShell?
With PowerShell in Windows 10, you can accomplish many tasks that would otherwise be challenging.
If you're wondering whether you can create a backup of driver installations on the system or not.
When creating a backup, all necessary files for driver installations will be backed up, including installation files. Therefore, you can use the driver backup not only to install on the current computer but also to install on other computers.
Using PowerShell to back up drivers on Windows 10
Step 1: Open PowerShell with Admin privileges.
To do this, first right-click on the Start button at the bottom left corner of the Taskbar, select PowerShell (Admin). Alternatively, another way is to type PowerShell into the Search box on the Start menu, from the search results list, find and right-click on Windows PowerShell, choose Run as administrator.
If a User Account Control (UAC) window appears on the screen, click Yes to run PowerShell with Admin privileges.
Step 2: Enter the command below (or you can copy and paste) into the PowerShell window, then press Enter:
Export-WindowsDriver -Online -Destination C:Backup
In the command above, replace C:Backup with the location where you want to save the exported drivers. Choose any location on your computer.
The execution process of the command to back up drivers on your Windows 10 using PowerShell may take a few minutes. Once the process completes, you can use File Explorer to navigate to the folder and view the list of folders containing driver packages.
Finally, close the PowerShell window.
From now on, you can use these drivers to install on your computer or on other compatible computers.
These are the steps using PowerShell to back up drivers on Windows 10. Hopefully, after reading this article, you will know more ways to back up installed drivers on your system to prevent potential issues or use that driver backup to install on another computer.
