Downloading device drivers to different harddrive

Or you could just wait until the new install has finished and then download and install. One of the reasons I asked the question is that I read a posting on the internet where someone said its always safer to copy the drivers from the USB flash drive to the hard drive first and install them from there.

They said that the drivers have to be unzipped and a Dell folder is created on the C: drive for these files. He said this can cause problems and possibly corrupt Windows system files. I didn't know if that was correct or just scaremongering.

Browse Community. Laptops General - Read Only. Turn on suggestions. Auto-suggest helps you quickly narrow down your search results by suggesting possible matches as you type. Showing results for. Search instead for. Step 1. Step 2. In the new window, you will see all partitions, the number and size of installed programs on every partition will also be displayed.

Select one partition that you want to move applications from and click "Next". Step 4. In the pop-up window, you need to confirm forcibly closing running applications when moving starts.

Click "OK" to begin the process. Warning: To ensure the apps run properly, please don't move or delete files in the source and target directory. In this article, all three approaches are available. About downloads folder When you download programs, those you download will be automatically saved in a C drive, therefore the free space on your C drive will decrease little by little, which may cause slow performance of your PC and your games may often get stuck.

How to transfer installed programs to another drive in Windows 10? Please read the following details carefully Method 1. Move programs to another drive via Settings You can use Setting to transfer your programs to Windows. Method 2. Move programs to another drive via Registry This method is offered by a user from Microsoft Community, we sort out it for you. If that isn't working, right-click the Command Prompt's title bar the Windows bar on top , go to Properties and enable "QuickEdit Mode.

By adding another string of text to the end of those commands, the output can be saved to a new text file in a location of your choosing by changing directory path in the command that you enter.

If you want the file saved to your desktop, still be sure to change the username from "TechSpot" to your own:. This is where we'll be retrieving the drivers from. Before getting started, note that you may be able to skip the trouble of exporting and importing the drivers.

From the Device Manager on the copy of Windows which needs the driver, if you can navigate to the DriverStore folder of another Windows installation where the driver is located, then the Device Manager should be able to search that destination for compatible driver files. Right-click the device, go to "Update driver," then follow the prompts until you can browse to DriverStore on the other OS or wherever your drivers are.

Also, exporting the driver files from Windows won't include additional software that would typically be bundled with a driver package, such as a utility that accompanies the driver. However, in many cases Windows provides the given functionality natively to some extent an interface for connecting to wireless networks for instance. That said, you may be able to copy the program files directly from one instance of Windows to another, or find the utility as a separate download from the driver, or a similar package with the same utility.

Alternatively, you can perform the same action by entering this command into an elevated PowerShell. However, you can export drivers from an offline image with a separate command:.