My screen is black on my Mac Book Pro. Can all files on hard drive be transferred to a back up or a new Mac Book?

My Mac Book Pro has gone black screen on me. You can hear the drive fire up but nothing happens on screen. I took it to a local authorized dealer and he said the motherboard is gone. I find that this happened way too soon. The Machine is only 4 years old and hasn't been used for at least 50 % of that time. Most of my work is done on my IMAC. If the motherboard is gone, can all the software, files etc be saved to a portable hard drive or transferred completely to a new Mac Book?

I had heard on another forumthat there was a defective chip in the logic board that was causing this and that apple was replacing them. Any truth to that rumour?