There are a number of reasons why you would want to backup drivers installed on your Windows 10 PC. Maybe you want to reinstall Windows 10 and don’t want to download all drivers again, maybe the driver for one of your device is no longer available, or maybe, your internet connection is not speed enough to download drivers of hundreds of MBs in size.
These days, drivers are easy to download. But as said, if a device driver is no longer available for download from the official sources, it makes sense to create a backup of the existing driver and save it in a safe location.
Talking about backing up drivers, there are some utilities around to help you backup drivers. Most of these third-party programs work without any issues, but why use a third-party program when you can backup Windows 10 drivers without touching after-market tools?
The PowerShell in Windows 10 is a gem. You can do so many things that you cannot otherwise.
One can use Windows PowerShell to export and backup all installed drivers in Windows 10 operating system. This means, after installing all drivers or just before reinstalling your Windows 10, you can use the PowerShell to backup all installed drivers.
If you are wondering, it’s possible to create a backup of installed drivers. When you create a backup, all files required to install a driver will be backed up, including the setup file. So, you can use the backed up drivers to install them again not just on the current PC but on other PCs as well.
Backup drivers installed on Windows 10
Here is how to backup all Windows 10 drivers using PowerShell.
Step 1: Open PowerShell with admin rights. To do so, right-click on the Start button and then click PowerShell (Admin). Alternatively, type PowerShell in Start/taskbar search, right-click on Windows PowerShell entry and then click Run as administrator option.
Click Yes button when you see the User Account Control screen to run PowerShell as administrator.
Step 2: At the PowerShell window, execute the following command:
Export-WindowsDriver -Online -Destination C:Backup
In the above command, replace C:Backup with the location where you would like to save exported drivers. You can choose any location on your PC.
To execute the above command, simply copy and paste or type the command, and then press Enter key.
The command might take a few minutes to complete backing up drivers. Once done, you may use the File Explorer to navigate to the folder to see a list of folders containing drivers. You can now install those drivers again on the same PC or any other compatible PC.
You may close the PowerShell window now.
You might also like to read our how to restore previous version of a driver and how to delete old drivers in Windows 10 guides.