'Magically' back up drivers

Driver Magician Lite lacks frills and showmanship, but the simple layout makes backing up device drivers much easier than pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

The quick install and small memory footprint leads users to hope that the rest of this freeware program runs the same way. That's no sleight-of-hand: Backing up every driver on my computer, from Bluetooth and tablet controllers, to Intel chipsets took less than five minutes.

Driver Magician sports a basic, but useful single screen.

(Credit: CNET Networks, Inc.)

Users can select drivers individually, or press the Select All button at the bottom of the spreadsheet-style layout. Selecting a single driver opens the driver's Properties information in the bottom pane. Pressing the Start Backup button opens a directory window where users choose where the drivers will be saved. Another click of the button begins the backup process.

I recommend creating a designated folder for backing up drivers. Driver Magician will mimic the computer's folder tree and save each driver to an appropriate folder. Saving those to the desktop would be harder to clean up than splaying a deck of cards across a stage.

Driver Magician doesn't do much else. If users need to use the drivers the program backed up, they will need to manually install them. However, users be hard-pressed to find such a useful tool that's as easy to use as this, and that's no trick.