Saw this Linux.com article linked on
NewsForge just now:
Encrypting partitions using dm-crypt and the 2.6 series kernel.
From the article: " Back in February of this year, Andrew Morten announced that cryptoloop was being deprecated in favour of dm-crypt. Although the initial announcement caused some consternation, dm-crypt was merged into the stable tree for the 2.6.4 kernel. This article looks at how to set up an encrypted partition using dm-crypt."
As far as trying these out, I do not use the 2.6 kernel, so I haven't tried those. I've only dabbled, so I'm not much help here; you would be better off reading through these articles. If you are on the 2.6 kernel, the dm-crypt kernel module would probably offer the most encryption and security. However, the EncFS userland software may be sufficient for you, and it won't require a kernel recompile.
Now after reading through that Linux.com dm-crypt article, one of the feedback comments states that the SuSE installer includes an option of encrypting partitions. I haven't used SuSE lately, so I can't confirm this, but you might want to try it if you are looking for a relatively painless way to encrypt your drive (YMMV; google to confirm whether SuSE has this option, and if there have been any problems).