I'm guessing that was closer to 40 years ago. 
Memories by decade:
My first hard drive was I think a 60 megabyte (shoe box sized) about 30 years ago, but the first drive I remember feeling painfully expensive (for me) was an 800MB SCSI drive that cost $400 - that was almost exactly 20 years ago. The only other time I remember a hard drive seeming searingly painful was just over a decade ago when I bought a pair of 46 GB Ultrastars because the 75GB was still unobtainable. Don't remember the price on them.
That being said, the last 5 years have been the largest plateau in hard drive price/TB that I've ever seen - even exceeding that rut when hard drives were stuck in the 160-200GB range for years. Around 2008, you could buy hard drives at close to $32/TB. Then prices went up, and are now just getting back to that level.
Memories by decade:
My first hard drive was I think a 60 megabyte (shoe box sized) about 30 years ago, but the first drive I remember feeling painfully expensive (for me) was an 800MB SCSI drive that cost $400 - that was almost exactly 20 years ago. The only other time I remember a hard drive seeming searingly painful was just over a decade ago when I bought a pair of 46 GB Ultrastars because the 75GB was still unobtainable. Don't remember the price on them.
That being said, the last 5 years have been the largest plateau in hard drive price/TB that I've ever seen - even exceeding that rut when hard drives were stuck in the 160-200GB range for years. Around 2008, you could buy hard drives at close to $32/TB. Then prices went up, and are now just getting back to that level.