Hi I´m not sure if I understand this exactly but I´m going to try to answer it. If you want to create an empty table from an empty external table the only thing you have to do is: Create external table create external table rangerhdfslog(j string) stored as textfile location '/ranger/audit/hdfs'; Create table from external table create table rangerhdfslog2 as select * from rangerhdfslog; So, that should work with any major issue. ... View more