How do I reformat and start over on an outdated system without buying a new computer?

It would appear that when I deleted the partition I originally had set up for Boot Camp, I did it through Disk Utility instead of Boot Camp. I now have about 65 gb of empty hard drive space that I can't utilize and my start up disk is almost full. I get a message that the disk can't be verified and the option to repair the disk isn't availble (greyed out). The system also wont allow me to resize my start up disk regardless of what I try. When I put my original Snow Leopard cd in in an effort to erase and reformat the system so I can start from scratch, it tells me it cant because it is outdated and the system has been upgraded to a newer operating system. I have everything backed up and would be happy just erasing the entire thing and starting from scratch with my original Snow Leopard OS and build it back up to current. Anyone have any ideas? My Mac Mini still works great and from a hardware standpoint is in excellent condition...

My next suggestion, get yourself an external USB or
Firewire hard drive (Firewire preffered because it is faster)
and clone your Mac installation to it using Carbon Copy Cloner
or SuperDuper (this is a good idea anyway, even without your
issues). Be sure you reformat/partition the external drive to
GUID partition scheme so it will reboot. After this is complete,
boot to it and then reformat and repartion the entire hard drive.
When it is complete, then clone the external drive back to the internal.
The above process should allow you to fix things without the need
to do any reinstalls and as a bonus, you end up with a fully bootable
back up of your system which you can update periodically.
Another option, is to create a USB memory stick based Recovery HD
(http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4848). Then boot to this and use Disk
Utility and reformat/repartition the internal drive and then use this to
reinstall Mavericks. This method does require reinstalling everything
and be sure to backup all your data before.
The reason that you may not be able to fix this currently is
perhaps you are trying to do it from the same disk you are
running from.

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The following Knowledge Base article and it's referenced link should get you started with the Erase and Install of Mavericks:
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http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14243
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http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14185
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Last Modified: Jan 12, 2015
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How do I reformat and start over on an outdated system without buying a new computer?

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