How To Export and Back Up Your Windows Drivers For Future Use

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When I clean install a Windows computer, finding and installing the proper drivers is always the annoying thing for me to do. It’d be nice if there is an easy way to save all the drivers that work on the current system so I don’t have to go through the same process finding them again next time when I re-install the system.

Well, there is a way and it’s a very easy straightforward way that I never thought of before.

Launch Windows PowerShell as Administrator. You can do so by pressing Win+X and select Windows PowerShell (Admin) from the menu that pops up.

And use the Export-WindowsDriver cmdlet to back up all of your drivers to a folder or a USB device. For example, the following command backs up all the drivers from my current running system into a folder called Drivers on a USB drive.

Export-WindowsDriver -Online -Destination y:\Drivers

Administrator  Windows PowerShell 2015 10 09 11 44 05 600x342 - How To Export and Back Up Your Windows Drivers For Future Use

Then, here is what looks like in the folder that has all the drivers saved.

Drivers 2015 10 09 11 45 56 600x399 - How To Export and Back Up Your Windows Drivers For Future Use

Later on when you need to install these drivers on a new installed system, you can insert the USB drive and specify the location for Device Manager to search for the driver.

Update Driver Software IntelR HD Graphics 2015 10 09 11 49 12 600x444 - How To Export and Back Up Your Windows Drivers For Future Use

You can also use the same cmdlet to export the drivers from an offline image file as well, such as this to export third-party drivers from an offline image mounted at c:\offline-image.

Export-WindowsDriver -Path c:\offline-image -Destination y:\Drivers

4 COMMENTS

  1. Doesn’t work on Windows 10 Pro
    ——————————–
    PS C:\Windows\system32> Export-WindowsDriver -Online -Destination D:\Drivers
    Export-WindowsDriver : The request is not supported.
    At line:1 char:1
    + Export-WindowsDriver -Online -Destination D:\Drivers
    + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Export-WindowsDriver], COMException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.Dism.Commands.ExportWindowsDriverCommand

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