Can I change a table from internal to external in hive?

问题

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?

回答1:

ALTER TABLE <table> SET TBLPROPERTIES('EXTERNAL'='TRUE')

Note: EXTERNAL and TRUE need to caps or it will not work

回答2:

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