1980s to present day Timeline

1980 - The world's first gigabyte-capacity disk drive, the IBM 3380, was the size of a refrigerator, weighed 550 pounds (about 250 kg), and had a price tag of $40,000
1986 - Standardization of SCSI
1989 - Jimmy Zhu and H. Neal Bertram from UCSD proposed exchange decoupled granular microstructure for thin film disk storage media, still used today.
1991 - 2.5-inch 100 megabyte hard drive
1991 - PRML Technology (Digital Read Channel with 'Partial Response Maximum Likelihood' algorithm)
1992 - first 1.3-inch hard disk drive - HP Kittyhawk
1994 - IBM introduces Laser Textured Landing Zones (LZT)
1996 - IBM introduces GMR (Giant MR) Technology for read sensors
1998 - UltraDMA/33 and ATAPI standardized
1999 - IBM releases the Microdrive in 170 MB and 340 MB capacities
2002 - 137 GB addressing space barrier broken
2003 - Serial ATA introduced
2005 - First 500 GB hard drive shipping (Hitachi GST)
2005 - Serial ATA 3Gbps standardized
2005 - Seagate introduces Tunnel MagnetoResistive Read Sensor (TMR) and Thermal Spacing Control
2005 - Introduction of faster SAS (Serial Attached SCSI)
2005 - First Perpendicular recording HDD shipped: Toshiba 1.8-inch 40/80 GB[7]
2006 - First 750 GB hard drive (Seagate)
2006 - First 200 GB 2.5" hard drive utilizing Perpendicular recording (Toshiba)
2006 - Fujitsu develops heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) that could one day achieve one terabit per square inch densities.[8]
2007 - First 1 terabyte hard drive[9] (Hitachi GST)
2008 - First 1.5 terabyte hard drive[10] (Seagate)
2009 - First 2.0 terabyte hard drive[11] (Western Digital)
2010 - First 3TB Hard drive (Seagate)
Predictions

2010 - 2.5 & 5-platter 3TB Hard drives expected, manufacturer claims by TDK and Western Digital[12]
2011 - 4TB Hard drives expected, Hitachi claim [13]