Q: My macbook hard drive died according to Genius. It had a 10.4 Tiger OSX. Can I replace with a hard drive with Mavericks 10.9 OSX?

You can replace it with any brand hard drive you'd like; however, the operating system is another matter. Can you please post back with the exact model/year information for your Macbook as that will determine which OS you can install. When you buy a hard drive, it is empty - you need to install the OS and any applications you want.

It depends on which Macbook it is. See: OS X Mavericks: System Requirements

If your Macbook will support mavericks, then you would need to install the OS that originally came with it, using the Installation disks that came with the Macbook when it was new, and then upgrade to at least 10.6.8, and from there you could install Mavericks.

If you're using a MacBook and not a MacBook Pro, no. No MacBook can boot both 10.4.11 and 10.9.

(105967)

If yours is a late 2006, you can't run Mavericks on it; it needs to be a late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer. You could run Snow leopard on it though and could buy that at the Apple store. You'd also need more RAM.

Check to be sure that the games can be run with 10.6.8

So if I bought a hard drive with snow leopard 10.6.8 already loaded

You need to buy an empty hard drive and buy 10.6.3 retail disk. Buying a hard drive with an OS installation from another Mac will most likely not work if the install was from a machine specific disk. You can buy the retail Snow leopard at the Apple store.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC573Z/A/mac-os-x-106-snow-leopard