From 2003-2008 I used a free hotmail account. Then I got on the gmail train and had all mail forwarded from hotmail to gmail.

Last year I went to check my hotmail account and couldn't find any emails older than 1 year. After some research [1] it seems that if the hotmail account wasn't accessed within the last year, they purge your inbox :(

Moral: Always keep back-ups, don't rely on web-services, especially free ones

[1] https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/oemail...