When you have reinstalled Windows, it takes quite some time to find and download the correct third-party drivers. You can back up those drivers so you can reinstall them right away without any hassle.
It is never pleasant to have to reinstall your operating system from scratch. And the most time-consuming task is often finding, locating, downloading and installing third-party drivers. Windows 10 has built-in drivers for many components and peripherals that allow these components to function fine without external drivers. But often the drivers from the manufacturer offer options that make the hardware work better or faster or have more functionality than the standard drivers of Windows.
Look up third-party drivers
Some third-party drivers can be easily found through Windows Update, but not all drivers you may need. You will have to look this up on the manufacturer's website. Sometimes this can be done via an automatic detection tool, but in many cases you will have to select the correct model.
Once you've installed them, it's possible to back them up so you don't have to track them down again if you need to reinstall Windows 10 for some reason. This is because all drivers already installed are kept in a certain folder, regardless of where they came from in the first place.
Backup drivers
Open the Explorer and navigate to the folder C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore. Copy the subfolder FileRepository to an external location, such as a USB drive or external hard drive. This folder can be quite large (several gigabytes), so make sure you have enough free space on your storage media.
Restore backups
Once you've reinstalled Windows 10, copy the folder you backed up in the previous step (FileRepository) to any convenient location on your PC.
Then you can restore the drivers one by one by clicking in Device Manager navigate to the associated hardware, right-click it and Update driver… to select.
Choose Search my computer for driver software. Then navigate to the FileRepository folder you just copied to your PC, and click Next one. Follow the on-screen instructions, and the driver from your backup will be immediately added to your clean Windows installation.
