I created a table in hive as a managed table, but it was supposed to be external, is it possible to change the table type of the table without losing the data?
George TeVelde
ALTER TABLE <table> SET TBLPROPERTIES('EXTERNAL'='TRUE')
Note: EXTERNAL and TRUE need to caps or it will not work
You can copy your data files from the Hive data location to the location you planned to store your external table, drop the table and re-create it as external.
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11839989/can-i-change-a-table-from-internal-to-external-in-hive