15-Minute Reviews :: Driver Magician v3.26 (Update)

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s review is on Driver Magician version 3.26 by GoldSolution Software – An application to aid you in making a backup of all your current drivers.

This is an updated review from a previous review of an earlier version, version 3.16. You can click here to read the previous review

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“Driver Magician offers a professional solution for device drivers backup, restoration, update and removal in Windows operating system. It identifies all the hardware in the system, extracts their associated drivers from the hard disk and backs them up to a location of your choice. Then when you format and reinstall/upgrade your operating system, you can restore all the ‘saved’ drivers just as if you had the original driver diskettes in your hands. After one system reboot, your PC will be loaded and running with the required hardware drivers.”

Quick Pros

• Four options for backing up
• Searches quickly
• Backup process is fairly quick, even when compressing on High
• Does not appear to result in same issue had as last time
• Few other tools built-in

Quick Cons

• Unknown Device Detector reported 6 devices already installed and working (Desired result?)
• More Backup and Restore underpowered
• Options for backing up should be in the menu or button drop-down like restore
• If it is for professional, why no professional options?

Expansion

I was worried about running this application this time around, considering the problems I had last review. Reading the changelog at the author’s website, it appears some memory leaks have been fixed, so hopefully this will make this application a little more stable.

Not too much has changed with this application besides bugfixes, compatibility updates and some other small aspects. The interface, as with before, is very simple. You choose what type of backup you would like to make on the Options page from one of four options; Back up drivers to folders, back up drivers to compressed file, back up drivers to self-extractor and back up drivers to auto-setup package. While you can restore your drivers using this applications with the first three options, you can also manually install them due to their backup nature as well. The third option you is a self-installer, essentially doing the dirty work for you if you don’t want to reinstall (or can’t in the case of being a Giveaway) the application during a reformat. From here, you simply click ‘Backup’ to search for all non-Microsoft drivers, or you can even search for all drivers from the menu or the button’s drop-down menu. After the search is complete (which is very quick), you can then pick and choose which drivers you wish to hang onto, or hit Select All and then press Start Backup. The process whizzes along fairly quickly, and in no time your backup will be complete.

I didn’t test the Restore functionality, mainly because I’m not quite ready to reinstall my test system yet. I was happy to see that I didn’t have the issue with the memory leak, but I would again caution anyone who is using any application which is in your system files to make a backup of your personal files before using a tool such as this one.

There are a few other goodies built into this application. The ability to uninstall all of your drivers if you wish for a clean slate; I’ve had cases in the past where a driver has ended up becoming corrupt and being hard to track down. This may be a good way to rid the system of any problematic drivers and get a fresh start. The unknown device detector is an interesting feature; It attempts to reveal the information on an unknown device so that you can look for drivers. When I tried it however, it listed 6 items which I already have drivers for and are running correctly, so I don’t know if this produced the desired results. Finally, there is a little backup application built-in for making backups of your Internet Explorer Favorites folder, registry, My Documents and Desktop. It is just not powerful enough for a backup solution and is more a quick backup to minimize damage by the application if it fails.

I do wish that the backup options would be right on the Driver Backup menu or the Backup button’s drop-down menu. While you can choose which restore type you wish to do from the Driver Restoration menu, you can’t choose how to backup except in options.

On a final note; The description of this application states that it ‘offers a professional solution’, however there is no professional-directed functionality in this application. I would hope to see USB drive support (not noted as a feature) for on-site backups to make reinstalls go significantly faster; It would also be great if there was an option to burn a CD as well built right in so that there can be a disc on file for a client, or minimize clutter/space waste on the USB drive. Sure, you could install this application on every client’s computer, but that is just an extra step, when really the application could be set up on a USB drive.

Final Verdict

Seeing I did not have any major issues this time, and the application appears to do what it is supposed to for the backup process (The few drivers I hand-checked appeared complete and intact), I’m more comfortable saying to give this application a try but make sure to backup first. Two of the extras seem a little underdeveloped and just tossed in for good measure and needs some work. For free, this title wouldn’t be a bad idea to have around just to wrap your drivers up for your next reinstall. As for paying $29.95, I feel the price tag is a little steep for what is offered. For individual use, how often are you going to really reinstall your system? Is it worth $29.95 just so you don’t have to re-download drivers? For professional use, I would hope for more functionality for a professional’s tool.

Click here to read the review of Driver Magician v3.16

Posted by BladedThoth on Wednesday, September 19, 2007