I renamed a Hive partitioned table DB1.Tab1 to DB1.Tab1_old and then moved another table with the same name but from another database DB2.Tab1 to the first database DB1.Tab1, using the same rename command. It looks like the partitioned directories were merged because when I deleted the first renamed one (DB1.Tab1_old), the moved table partitions (DB1.Tab1) were deleted. I would like to understand why this happened. Regards