? - Can I Test Mavs and Back-up All Changes to SL - ?

Question

SL is  great and I really don't want to leave.
Having said that, it's probably time to at least do a good hard test on Mavs before I'm so far out of date that I'm essentially teletype circa 1900.
So, I'm hardware good and application good (installed Mavs on a bootable external and can tell that from a quick run on 3 different iMacs at work --- but running off of an external via Firewire is too slow for extended work and/or purposes - just did that as a 1st round check on things).
So here's my question -
If I partition my HD; then SuperDuper my existing 10.6.8 to the new partition, install Mavs on the new partition, boot from the Mav's partition, use that for a few days to see how things are going, and assuming as I do all will be well  --
IF all is not good with Mavs, and IF I want to revert back to SL in a week or two after running Mavs exclusively, since I am in a small business situation and need to keep everything up to date, is there any way to keep the SL partition up to date as I go along - so if, for example, I amend a contract, or create a new folder, or do whatever on the Mavs partition, to have it "mirror" to the SL partition?
More to the point - Any way to "sync" my 2 partitions so that the SL partition stays current with the Mavs partition? (I use that term loosely as I am a professional with restrictions on what I can "cloud" store).

Answer 1

The only issue with that arrangement is that some Mavericks versions of the applications, i.e., Mail, iPhoto, Aperture, will ireversably modify the data files so that they won't be able to be used by the Snow Leopard versions of the apps.
I agree that running from an external partition doesn't normally make a big performance difference, the exception might be an older USB1 drive.
One can easily add a partition to their internal drive and install say Mavericks on that addition. If you decide against using Mavericks, the partition can easily be removed and the space reclaimed for the original SL partition.
If he decides that he no longer want the SL partition, then it would be little more complex and time consuming to arrange. He would have to erase the SL partition, clone the the Mavericks partition to the SL's prior partition, then remove the outer Mavericks partition and expand the inner Mavericks partition to reclaim all of the space.