The floppy disk was the undisputed champion of removable PC media — for decades! Then it died, unable to match the growing capacity of modern files. Amen.

Since the floppy’s demise, and even for a time during, alternative champions have waited in the wings. Perhaps the most popular was the ZIP disk, but it’s way, way gone as well. What remains are the optical discs, which I dispatched on Monday’s blog post, and media cards.

Based on the existence of the 19-in-one media card readers, I can safely assert that there are, most likely, at least 19 different media card formats available. Each of them is vying for a chance to be the new removable electronic storage standard.

No, I’m not going to list all 19 permutations. Instead, here are a few of the more popular media cards, specifically those you could stick into a 19-in-one media card reader:

Of the lot, the most common you’ll find today are the Compact Flash cards and the SD cards. Of those two, the SD cards seem to be winning the popularity contest.

For example, Apple’s iMacs have an SD Card slot right next to the (soon-to-be-obsolete) optical drive slot. But more importantly, the last few laptops I’ve purchased all came with SD card slots. So if I were to guess, I would say that the SD card is most likely to end up the winner in the memory card marathon.

I still use Compact Flash cards in my primary digital camera. But I’ve noticed that the consumer digital cameras tend to use the SD cards. So, once again, chalk up one for SD cards.

Finally, Android phones and tablets use the MicroSD card format. While that’s too tiny to be effective for computer storage, you can obtain SD card adapters that allow you to use the MicroSD cards in an SD card slot on a computer.

In the end, perhaps it’s the SD card format that survives the removable storage wars that have taken place since the floppy disk’s demise? Time will tell, but in the meantime my memory card/thumb drive drawer is rapidly fulling with SD cards. That means something.