What should I do about saving my hardware drivers as so many instructions seem to recommend?

In this excerpt from
Answercast #71, I look at when you should save device drivers and
updates.

Saving drivers

Here’s my rule of thumb. Whenever you get a driver from some place
other than Windows setup, save a copy of it right then. Not later, not
after it’s installed:

• Save what it is you downloaded;

• Or save what it is you got on a CD with a device;

• Or save whatever you got that wasn’t part of setting up Windows from the
  original installation media.

Those are the ones that are typically difficult to replace.

If it’s in Windows, if it’s a device driver that’s in Windows itself (in
other words, it was part of the original setup of the machine, part of the
drivers that came with it, part of the drivers that were installed by virtue of
running a Windows installation disc), they’re going to be there again the next
time you install Windows. There really isn’t a lot of reason to try and back
those up.

Installed drivers

When you get third-party drivers or drivers later (like when you add a new
video card and it comes with drivers, or when you add a piece of hardware that
comes with its own drivers, or when you update a driver outside of Windows
Update… in other words, you go out and you grab your own latest and greatest
copy of the mouse drivers or the video drivers or the whatever drivers), save
what you downloaded. Save that.

Save that somewhere safe so that when you reinstall Windows again later, you
can provide it, if Windows setup asks (which it might, probably not… but it
might). More importantly after that reinstallation of Windows is done, you can
then reapply or re-update those drivers using what you had saved before.

Drivers may change

It’s very possible that in some cases, it may be kind of moot. You may not
end up using what you saved. For example:

• You install Windows.

• Eventually, you get a new video card and you save the drivers that came with
  it.

• A little while later, you decide to download and update those video
  drivers.

• A little while later, still, you reinstall Windows.

Well, what you’re going to reinstall of course will be the drivers that…
what? Came with the card? Maybe. Came with Windows? Maybe.

In that situation, it’s always useful to go and check out the latest drivers
that are available for download at the time you reinstall.

If there’s nothing new, great. You don’t have to download it because you can
use what you saved before. If the company went out of business (and this is the
big one because it happens from time to time; things disappear from the
internet all the time), then go grab what you’ve downloaded before. You’ve got
your backup copy and you can still get to where you need to be.

If on the other hand, there are newer drivers still, then well, you might
want to go ahead and download them again. But that’s a convenience. The saving
of drivers is really a safety issue for those drivers that didn’t come with
Windows.

It’s much like saving all of the downloads for programs that you purchase so
that you’ve always got a copy that you can reinstall at any time.