What is the best practice of deleting the complete data from Delta table

[brickster_2018]

I have a use case where I need to delete the data completely and load new data to the existing Delta table. 

[brickster_2018 · Accepted solution]

It's recommended to use the overwrite option. Overwrite the table data and run a VACUUM command. 

• To Delete the data from a Managed Delta table, the DROP TABLE command can be used. 
• If it's an external table, then run a DELETE query on the table and then execute VACUUM with RETAIN HOURS 0
• CREATE or REPLACE table can also be used
• We do not recommend deleting the files from the underlying storage directly. That can cause issues with the transaction logs