Q: can one go back to 10.6.8 snow leopard from 10.9 maverick?

Yes. Erase the partition and either create a new Snow Leopard installation or restore a backup of one.

(94851)

Downgrade Lion/Mountain Lion or Mavericks to Snow Leopard

  1. Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer Disc. After the installer

      loads select your language and click on the Continue

      button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the

      Utilities menu.

  2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the

      mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status

      of the drive in DU's status area.  If it does not say "Verified" then

      the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing.  SMART

      info will not be reported  on external drives. Otherwise, click on

      the Partition tab in the DU main window.

  3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions

      from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS

      Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the

      partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on

      the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.

  4. Quit DU and return to the installer. Install Snow Leopard.

This will erase the whole drive so be sure to backup your files if you don't have a backup already. If you have performed a TM backup using Lion be aware that you cannot restore from that backup in Snow Leopard (see below.) I suggest you make a separate backup using Carbon Copy Cloner.

If you have Snow Leopard Time Machine backups made while on Snow Leopard, then you may do a full system restore per #14 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.  If you have subsequent backups from Lion, you can restore newer items selectively, via the "Star Wars" display, per #15 there, but be careful; some Snow Leopard apps may not work with the Lion/Mountain Lion files.

I made the mistake of jumping from Snow Leopard to Mavericks. My Mac is just much too slow.

If you're like me and have no Time Machine backups, I found this similar way to work perfectly.

1. Obviously you will need to backup everything you wish to save on an external drive.

2. Have your Snow Leopard 10.6 install disks.

3. With your Mac on, insert the disk.

4. Go to "System Preferences" and select your OS 10.6 start up disk and confirm you want the Mac to start up from the disk instead of the MAC HD. Click restart.

5. With the disk still in, wait several minutes for the disk to load.

6. Select the language and click the arrow.

7. When the menu bar appears, click "Utilities" and click "Disk Utility".

8. Select the MAC HD drive and go to the tab that says erase and confirm that is it erased and follow the prompts as far as partitions and such.

9. X out of that screen and then a window will pop up, allowing you to install OS 10.6 disk and install Snow Leopard. This will be just like when your OS was first installed when you first turned on the Mac.