After adding a partition to an external table in Hive, how can I update/drop it?
in addition, you can drop multiple partitions from one statement (Dropping multiple partitions in Impala/Hive).
Extract from above link:
hive> alter table t drop if exists partition (p=1),partition (p=2),partition(p=3);
Dropped the partition p=1
Dropped the partition p=2
Dropped the partition p=3
OK
EDIT 1:
Also, you can drop bulk using a condition sign (>,<,<>), for example:
Alter table t
drop partition (PART_COL>1);