# luks **URL:** \ **Category:** SLES Configure-Administer\ **Created:** [January 17, 2019, 7:56pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/luks/33427 "2019-01-17T19:56:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mrivera100](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ce7236/32.png) [@mrivera100](https://forums.suse.com/u/mrivera100)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2019, 7:56pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/luks/33427/1 "2019-01-17T19:56:01Z")
Has anyone used luks on sles11 Sp4 for whole or partial disk encryption? Can you use luks on a system that is already installed and running? ---
**Author:** ![ab1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@ab1](https://forums.suse.com/u/ab1)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2019, 4:22am UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/luks/33427/2 "2019-01-18T04:22:48Z")
On 01/17/2019 11:04 AM, mrivera100 wrote:[color=blue] > Has anyone used luks on sles11 Sp4 for whole or partial disk encryption? > Can you use luks on a system that is already installed and running?[/color] For what it’s worth, I use LUKS full time on my laptops for full disk encryption, but I never do on servers because I usually want servers to boot without me there, and full disk encryption necessarily prevents that if done properly. I believe you can always add LUKS to a new partition, but if you want to take a disk that has data and add encryption you of course need to rewrite that, and that usually means moving the data elsewhere, partitioning the drive to add encryption, then moving data back. If you are only using 1/5 the drive perhaps you could add an encrypted partition, move data over, then encrypt the rest and join it up with LVM, but that’s a hack job. – Good luck. If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface, show your appreciation and click on the star below. If you want to send me a private message, please let me know in the forum as I do not use the web interface often.