diff --git a/HISTORY.rst b/HISTORY.rst
index 30bdecc3b..52c48c73e 100644
--- a/HISTORY.rst
+++ b/HISTORY.rst
@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@
   Process.as_dict(): "attrs" and "ad_value". With this you can iterate over all
   processes in one shot without needing to catch NoSuchProcess and do list/dict
   comprehensions.
+- 1051_: disk_usage() on Python 3 is now able to accept bytes.
 
 **Bug fixes**
 
diff --git a/psutil/_pswindows.py b/psutil/_pswindows.py
index e284bb699..c0d6d001a 100644
--- a/psutil/_pswindows.py
+++ b/psutil/_pswindows.py
@@ -239,13 +239,9 @@ def swap_memory():
 
 def disk_usage(path):
     """Return disk usage associated with path."""
-    try:
-        total, free = cext.disk_usage(path)
-    except WindowsError:
-        if not os.path.exists(path):
-            msg = "No such file or directory: '%s'" % path
-            raise OSError(errno.ENOENT, msg)
-        raise
+    if PY3 and isinstance(path, bytes):
+        path = path.decode(FS_ENCODING)
+    total, free = cext.disk_usage(path)
     used = total - free
     percent = usage_percent(used, total, _round=1)
     return _common.sdiskusage(total, used, free, percent)
diff --git a/psutil/tests/test_system.py b/psutil/tests/test_system.py
index 19f997a85..bb485296c 100755
--- a/psutil/tests/test_system.py
+++ b/psutil/tests/test_system.py
@@ -463,11 +463,9 @@ def test_disk_usage_unicode(self):
         if ASCII_FS:
             with self.assertRaises(UnicodeEncodeError):
                 psutil.disk_usage(TESTFN_UNICODE)
-        else:
-            safe_rmpath(TESTFN_UNICODE)
-            self.addCleanup(safe_rmpath, TESTFN_UNICODE)
-            os.mkdir(TESTFN_UNICODE)
-            psutil.disk_usage(TESTFN_UNICODE)
+
+    def test_disk_usage_bytes(self):
+        psutil.disk_usage(b'.')
 
     def test_disk_partitions(self):
         # all = False