@Iron   I don't think it is mandatory to enable the safemode during copyToLocal. May be you can use safemode to make sure nobody is updating/deleting/inserting the data during the data copy.   I know the difficulties without cloudera manager/hortonworks, etc   Long back, i've used the below export/import method for Hive table backup, again this will export the data to HDFS and you still have to use copyTolocal. The advantage is, it will also take care of metadata   https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/Hive/LanguageManual+ImportExport#LanguageManualImportExport-ExportSyntax   You can use these options as temporary solution but once you start using cloudera manager or any other management tool, I would recommend to use the backup option that i've mentioned earlier ... View more