You have been told to backup your hard disk and data thousands of time, but I am sure few people will tell you that you need to backup your hardware driver as well. In case you are not the geek in your house, the hardware driver is the software that provides detailed instructions to the OS on how the hardware should work. Without the driver, your hardware (such as motherboard, video card, sound card) won't be able to function properly.

Backing up your device driver saves you the trouble of searching, downloading and installing the drivers after you have reformatted the system. Also, in some OEM computers, the device drivers are custom made and are not available anywhere on the Web. If you lost the driver CD, your hardware will cease to work properly. When such situation arises, driver backup software will come in handy.

Double Driver [No Longer Available]

Double Driver is a simple and small software that you can use to backup/restore your device driver. There is nothing fanciful about Double Driver, except that it does its job well.

Double Driver is able to detect between third party drivers and drivers provided by Microsoft. By default, only the third party drivers are backup since the Microsoft drivers come installed when you reinstall the OS. However, if you want a comprehensive solution, you can select all the Microsoft drivers and back them up as well.

Within the Double Driver application, there is this function that allows you to build a portable version of DD. With this portable version, you will be able to run it on any Windows machine without installation.

DriverMax

When it comes to driver backup, DriverMax is the powerhouse. Not only does it backup/restore your driver, it also searches the Web and update your driver when a newer version is available. No more searching for some rare driver on discs or on the Web.

There are several functions that come with the DriverMax application. You can export/import drivers and view the installed drivers report, check for driver update and identify unknown hardware. There is even a function where you can check out the popular hardware (video cards and processors) out there.

DriverMax is free to download and use, but you need to set up a user account and obtain a registration key before you can access the full functionality.

Driver Backup 2!

There have been very little publicity about this software, but that doesn't mean this is not a good software. In fact, among the three, this is the one that I like most.

While it does not provide driver update like DriverMax does, it does give you plenty of choices when backing up your drivers. You can choose to view between OEM drivers, third party drivers or both and backup those drivers that are digitally signed or fully portable. For your information, fully portability refers to the ability to backup and restore without causing a gitch to the system.

DriverBackup 2! also comes with a command line mode that makes it possible to automate driver backup using particular parameters in the command line. If you know absolutely nothing about the command line, I would advise you to steer clear of this mode.

One last thing that I like about DriverBackup 2! is that it is already a portable app when you first download it. There is no installation required and you just need to double-click the DrvBk.exe file to run it. Cool.

What other software do you use to backup your driver?