I got a new computer on 9/17.  I installed aol 9.0 that I was using on my old computer.  I just realized that all of my old "sent" and "old" emails are gone.  All I have left are from September 09.  I had e-mails from my deceased father from years ago that I kept in the "old" mail file.  Unfortunately I didn't move them to a "save" file.  Can they be retrieved?  I have my old hard drive, would they be on it?

   So when you installed AOL 9 on your new computer you did not connect the old computer in anyway and the old emails were on the old computer.  Correct?
   It sounds to me that the old emails are on your old computer.  The previous emails that you had once you installed AOL 9 were emails that AOL had on their server.  What happens is when you check your email, the email messages are put on your computer but they are not deleted from AOL's server until they are a certain age (like one month).  When you check your emails again, AOL compares what you have on your computer to what they have on their server and only give you the ones that you do not have.  That is my guess at least on what happened.
   I would think that the old emails are on your old computer and that you could copy them to a CD and then to your new computer.  I would think that they are all kept in a certain directory.  I would suggest that you go to AOL and ask them for the details on how to do that.

Actually, everything that was on my old computer was transferred directly to my new computer.  So, maybe I just hadn't noticed that the old e-mails were missing.  Did AOL change their policy of retaining all old e-mails with the 9.0 SE edition sometime in 2009?  I know I had them as late as this spring.  I didn't upgrade to the later editions of AOL until yesterday hoping that this wouldn't happen again.  I have 9.1 now.  AOL will not talk to me because I am on the free side, no help whatsoever.  My plan is to start put the old hard drive back in the old box and see if they are still there.