MBP 15" (late 2008) new Hard drive issues in 10.6.8 but not in 10.8.5

I have a 15" Macbook Pro (Late 2008) with an up to date EFI firmware (ver 2.8).
When I went to replace the hard drive (Hitachi 320GB hard wired at 1.5Gb/s) with a new hard drive (Seagate 1TB SSHD).
This new HD runs at 3gb/s or 6gb/s and my MBP which will only do 3GB/s (link speed) DOES select this speed.
Now I've read over 1000 posts (no, really) about this topic of SATA drives in older MBP's but problem is a bit more nuanced.
I partitioned the new HD as follows (disk1-250GB, disk2-250GB, disk3-500GB).  I have to do this because I run two versions of OSX.
I run OSX 10.6.8 for mobile audio recording and some post-production video editing and my software runs GREAT in Snow leopard.
Of course, there are some good reasons to have a newer OSX and so I put 10.8.5 on disk2.
On my old HD I had two partitions (disk1-150GB, disk2-170GB) and then used disk utility to copy the old drive to the new.
Here's where my problem is more nuanced.  The new drive works AWESOME when running 10.8.5 at 3GB/s.
In 10.6.8, however, I get pinwheels, beachballs, hiccups, etc when running the hard drive at 3Gb/s. 
I'll play an aif audio file in Quicktime player and it will stop producing audio, BUT it keeps track of the time.  I swap back in my old HD and everything runs fine.
I'm planning in getting a different drive (one that works at 1.5 and 3.0GB/s) but I'd like to keep this drive as it boots up 10.8.5 FAST!  In about 15 secs or so.  OR, I could just swap out hard drives when I need to use 10.6.8 (which is really easy on my MBP but not preferable) and dedicate the old one for 10.6.8 only.
QUESTION:::::
Does anyone have any idea why the same physical HD would work fine in 10.8.5 but have constant (every 15-20secs) read/write errors in 10.6.8??
The fact that it works great in 10.8.5 has me a bit puzzled of whether or not there's an inherent hardware incompatibility.
Sorry for the long post, just trying to give as much info as possible.

Melophage-
I did try booting from the external SATA enclosure and all was fine; no hiccups.  I used disk utility to restore my Snow Leopard partition to a newly purchased HD; a Western Digital 1TB(Mainstream) drive that operates at 1.5 or 3.0 GB/s.  I noticed it's power requirement is about 3/4 of the factory drive which is also good.
Amazingly this drive actually works with a link speed of 3GB/s with 10.6.8.  And no pinwheels/beachballs.
Possible Conclusions:
My MBP SATA onboard controller is OK with a HD that's 1.5/3.0 GB/s but NOT quite OK with 3.0/6.0GB/s.  Although both drives had a link speed of 3.0Gb/s, only the newly purchased "slower" drive worked flawlessly.  I'm fine with this being that my Apple factory drive was hard wired at 1.5Gb/sec and its speed was adequate for the audio/video recording I do in 10.6.8.  Hopefully it works fine with 10.8.5.  Still restoring that partition to the Western Digital drive.
In the end, I have a HD with over 3X the capacity as before and a link speed of 3GB/s. 
I may not have the 15sec boot-up time as I did with the hybrid drive, but I won't miss it.

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